Erika Ramirez is one of 35 ladies who show up to school every day around 6:15 a.m. to begin preparing breakfast and lunch for the approximately 3,000 people who walk the halls.

At Ben Davis not only do the lunch ladies have to serve lunch but a lot of students also eat breakfast, so they also have to make sure they have enough to feed the nearly 3,000 students.

A lot more time and work go into serving lunch at any school than you might think. Prep for the starting of a week starts early Monday morning, 20 minutes are set aside for breakfast prep every day. But they aren’t prepping for that day’s breakfast they are prepping for the next day. They try to stay at least one day ahead of schedule.

Ramirez is a lunch lady and she has worked here for three years and loves what she does.

“I was on the Wayne Township website and saw an opening for the lunch department and applied,” Ramirez said.

She mainly stays in the teacher’s lounge, serving them and making sure every tray is filled and every teacher is full before they leave. She has been married for 14 years and has a beautiful family of five. Her kids are between 8 and 15 but do not attend Wayne Township schools.

Between all the lunch lines her favorite thing to cook is the pasta, “Unlike some of the other lunch lines you actually have to cook the pasta and sauce,” Ramirez said.

She likes to put in the work. The rest of the lines you only really have to steam the food or warm it up.

Outside of school, she cooks for her three children pretty much every day, and their favorite thing for her to cook is tacos. When asked if she likes to cook outside of school she said: “ I kind of have to.” But she does like to cook both in and outside of school.

Ramirez has a pretty busy life with balancing work and her children but she loves it and she loves coming to school and cooking for the students.

What is your favorite superhero?

• Spiderman

If you were a superhero, what powers would you have

• Flying and being invisible