In that time, you'd think she would have acquired a following of angry drivers for all those slips left on peoples' windshields.
Not so.
She hands out change and cancels tickets before she prints them if the driver is coming to plug the meter, and she's quick with a wave and smile to everyone she meets.
No wonder she was named Downtown Employee of the Year in January.
Anne Guest, director of Missoula Parking Commission, nominated Winchell, mostly because of her personality.
“She relates so well to everybody, from the homeless to CEOs,” Guest said. “She's so deeply respected by everyone. I get compliments from people about her all the time.”
“It was bizarre getting that award,” Winchell said. “I'm the parking lady, you know.”
It was the “tear-jerking” letter of nomination her boss wrote, she said.
The evening Winchell received the award, her husband, Gary, started crying because he was so proud of her.
Winchell said she thought something was wrong with him. He never cries, she said, because he's so tough.
Winchell says she has always made it her goal to be anything but tough on her job.
“I wanted to change the perception of who we are. I wanted to educate people about parking because I never had any idea. I think I have done well, but you never know.”
She said the meter maids just try “to control the traffic and keep everything moving. We try to always be fair.”
About 20 years ago, Winchell would've disagreed with that statement.
Leaving her car in a parking spot with an expired meter while bartending at the Top Hat added up to around $1,000 in outstanding parking tickets over a span of four or five years.
They never used to come after you to pay your tickets, Winchell said.
Eventually, she worked off these tickets by hand-writing citations at City Hall for Wally Clark, a longtime Municipal Court judge.
But Winchell continued to get parking tickets.
“Those meter maids knew where I was parked, and the second my meter expired they got me,” she said. “If there was a ticket on my car there would be a fight.”
“(They) hated me and I hated them,” Winchell said.
She had about $100 in parking tickets again when she received a warning that her car was going to get a boot.
She visited the parking commission office and told them they weren't going to find her car to put a boot on it. She had just quit her job at the Top Hat and asked them to tell her how she was going to pay rent.
“You'll just have to put me in jail,” Winchell told Tom Kosena, former director of the parking commission.
Kosena decided to offer her a job to pay off her tickets instead of sending her to jail.
“I didn't think I'd last a week,” Winchell said.
Twenty years later, she's still checking parking meters.
“I never have a problem getting up and going to work,” she said.
Outside is the perfect place for her to work. Working in an office would prevent her from forming friendships with so many people and animals downtown.
Between writing tickets, Winchell greets friends, fellow downtown employees and strangers.
“All downtown employees are like a family,” Winchell said. “I can't live without these people.”
Over the years, she has received little gifts from people she has met. The gifts decorate the inside of her scooter.
Each knickknack has its own story.
Winchell never had a bouquet of flowers in the back left window of her scooter until Dennis, a friend, told her to stick a dried bouquet he gave her there. When that bouquet started to fall apart, she replaced it with a new one.
Sometimes people will be yelling at her about their ticket and then see her flowers, ask if it was her birthday and apologize for being so rude. The flowers also remind her to be happy, and “I have Dennis to thank for that,” Winchell said.
Also in her rear window is a Humane Society of Western Montana sticker. Winchell has a stack of pamphlets about how to treat your animals. Every car that has a dog left in it gets a pamphlet on their windshield.
Winchell said most people are nice in Missoula because the tickets are so inexpensive.
“People are different here,” she said.
Most people are only mean to her once, she said. But some people just have an attitude and want to fight with someone, and she's the perfect candidate.
“Winchell is unique in that she can defuse any hostile situation with her humor,” Guest said.
When Winchell isn't marking tires and passing out parking tickets, she likes to garden, play golf with her husband, go rafting and walk her two dogs.
While Winchell says she has experienced her share of tragedies and has had plenty of opportunities for things to turn out bad, they haven't. You can turn the bad into something amazing if you dig enough, she said.
“It's more than a paycheck,” Winchell said. “All of these relationships you take years to foster, they mean something to you.”
Amy Faxon is a newsroom intern for the Missoulian. She is a journalism student at the University of Montana.
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