KAREN KALERGIS: So many times, when you tell somebody that you meet that you do victim assistance, they're like, "I couldn't do that." Nobody ever asks people, "Why do you do that?" I started in victim services in 1991 at the Texas Crime Victim Clearinghouse in Governor Richards' office.
One of the things that Governor Richards really instilled in me was the ideal that government is really there to serve people.
Information is power. And when you've been traumatized and you've been victimized, having that kind of information about where to go next, who to call, is critical. I spent about 5 years in crime victims' compensation and one of the things that started to happen was these mass casualty incidents.
When Luby's happened, all of a sudden, you had 23 families who were victims and you had 150 people who were at that cafeteria who were victims. What could we in the Victim Assistance field do to be able to respond to that? And Texas being Texas, we decided that we were going to put together our own crisis consortium. MAN: Holy cow! About a third of the building has been blown away!
KAREN KALERGIS: When Oklahoma City happened, the systems that we put in place in Texas to take care of our people, we were also then able to take care of other people. I think it's important to make sure those people who are providing victim services are providing it from a healthy spot. I'm proud of the work that we did on the Resiliency Project and that there are child abuse organizations throughout the country that are using that organizational model to help build resiliency in their staff and volunteers.
WOMAN: I'd like to think that I bring light...
KAREN KALERGIS: I never would have expected that what started out as an interesting opportunity to do something different ended up being a lifetime career and a lifetime love.
