Volunteer Helps Make A Difference

Chris Everts’ trial by fire started in Kootenai Medical Center’s emergency room when she held a bucket for a new mother so sick over being raped that she couldn’t stop vomiting.

Chris, a volunteer for the Women’s Center’s rape crisis line, nearly upchucked herself after doctors told the 21-year-old woman there was a chance the rapist had impregnated her.

Still recovering from giving birth, the woman hadn’t restarted birth control. She took the “morning-after” pill doctors offered her.

“I wanted to be a counselor and figured the rape crisis line would be the toughest test,” Chris says.

She was right. Volunteering on the rape crisis line fresh from the University of Idaho with a bachelor’s degree in psychology prompted Chris to quit graduate school for four years. But she didn’t quit the Women’s Center.

“I care,” she says as if she’s surprised at how much.

Chris is 30 and not one to blow her own horn. She was speechless last month when United Way of Kootenai County named her its Adult Volunteer of 1997.

“She loves the program so much,” says Jan Zaborski, administrative assistant for the Women’s Center. “Her goal was to get 10 volunteers on the (rape phone) line, and the first time 10 showed up at our monthly meeting, she was so touched she cried.”

Four years on the line - responding to calls from the hospital about new rape victims, talking women out of suicide, comforting girls only a breath into puberty during rape exams - took their toll on Chris.

The line averages 14 calls a month. Of the two or three callers who report new rapes, most never report the crime.

The new mother didn’t.

“She’d had a drink and somehow felt like she was to blame,” Chris says, growing frustrated as the situation replays itself in her mind. “She was 21 and old enough to drink. She wasn’t drunk.”

When Chris couldn’t stop crying after her shifts, she moved from the phone to personal visits, not to victims but to people who respond to them and to potential victims.

She helped write a handbook for sexual assault education and prevention and a manual for police, paramedics and others who often are the first to see victims after a rape.

Police keep the handbooks in their station lobbies and patrol cars.

She defined rape for all ages, from college students to senior citizens, and taught common-sense precautions - locking doors and windows to stop unwanted visitors, lighting house entrances, varying routines.

Last year, the Panhandle Health District received a grant to tackle violence as a public health issue and asked Chris to teach violence prevention throughout North Idaho. She earns $25 a presentation. All her other work is voluntary.

Somehow, she managed to slip graduate school back into her schedule. She earned her master’s degree in criminal justice with an emphasis on victims last summer from Washington State University’s Spokane campus.

Now Chris has $28,000 in school loans to repay and needs a paying job. Nothing else would pull her away from the Women’s Center.

“If I won the lottery,” she says, “I would spend the rest of my life working there.”

High steppers

Irish dance is all the rage, and the Post Falls Arts Council is wise to fall in step. The council invited The Haran Irish Dancers to perform Feb. 27 at Celtic Music Fest ‘98 at, appropriately, Carnegies in the Royal Highlands.

The dancers, from Rice, Wash., studied in Ireland and won first place for their Riverdance-esque choreography last year at the North American Championships. Sounds too good to miss. Call 777-9278 for details.

, DataTimes MEMO: Who’s the best dancer of any style in the Panhandle? Point him or her out to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.