i am sassa

Jan Rader is one of my personal heroes, and I couldn’t be prouder of the way she represents our state and the city of Huntington, West Virginia.

I learned about her a couple years ago by watching the Netflix documentary Heroin(e), which became wildly popular and was even nominated for an Academy Award. I remember sitting on my grandmother’s couch with my son, both of us watching through tears. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Watch it with your children.

Sometimes the labels given to this area make it hard to feel proud of home…Overdose Capitol of America is one that stings. A lot. Everyone from here has a quick, personal connection to a life lost to drugs. And Jan Rader has prevented countless more, both with her own hands and her powerful, empathetic approach to Huntington’s opioid epidemic.

She could have easily made it into my list of women to paint regardless of where she called home. She is the first female Fire Chief in this state. She was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2018 by Time Magazine. I’m even double-checking these dates with an article about how she won Nexstar Media’s Remarkable Woman Contest (which tells a cool story of Jan talking to Meryl Streep at the Academy Awards). In 2019 the American Legion named her National Firefighter of the Year. She’s won plenty of awards.

It isn’t her awards that make her a hero to me, though. It is her heart. It is the kindness that shines through with every word she speaks, and the empathy she exudes and encourages in others. Under her leadership, real problems are faced and addressed with love and understanding. She fights to remove the stigma surrounding drug addiction, and treats the people she saves, sometimes many times in the same week, with dignity and love. She addresses the trauma her fire department deals with on a daily basis the way only a brilliant, empathetic woman could…with conversation, yoga classes, and in-house massages. She cries when she speaks about Huntington and its many residents who have overcome addiction and are now leading fulfilling lives. Some people think strong is swallowing your emotions and putting on a hard front. I know that strong is opening your heart, feeling it all, and loving it all.

Thank you, Jan Rader. You are an absolute mountain of a woman to me.