It’s been said more than once during the past eight months that Shannon Sullivan was an unlikely leader in the grass-roots drive that ousted the mayor of Washington’s second-largest city.

Actually, she was the most likely leader there could be: an outraged citizen and mother, baffled that others with stronger credentials and greater civic influence didn’t rise up to insist on decency at City Hall. For her act of conscience, and for the positive impact she had on community life in Spokane, The Spokesman-Review editorial board is pleased to declare her its Citizen Contributor of 2005.

A painful truth emerged following last May’s disclosure of inappropriate behavior by Jim West. It’s this: All of us are unlikely candidates for a role that demands moral courage, powerful convictions and emotional endurance. If the community were teeming with “likely” candidates, the recall petition Sullivan expected to find at the Spokane County Courthouse last spring would have been waiting there for her. She would have scratched her name on it, and her role would have been over, her rendezvous with celebrity cancelled.

But, as she’s related numerous times, there was no line to join that day in May, no petition to sign, no mobilized body of civic indignation assembled to hold West accountable for his conduct. The Spokesman-Review and other media could do their reporting, a handful of civic organizations could issue calls for the mayor to step down, several individuals could utter frustrated words – but it would take citizen action to make something happen.

When no one else was acting, Sullivan, a single mom with no political or legal experience, did. Otherwise, Spokane would now be the city that condoned a 54-year-old mayor who sought sexual relationships with teenagers. The community escaped that embarrassment because Shannon Sullivan held a core belief: Her son and other children should be able to look up to local leaders.

Naively perhaps, she stepped into the cross hairs of public anger. She invited scrutiny of her own life, which had a conspicuous smudge. She’d been jailed for a day and put on probation for firing a gun at an unoccupied car, the result of a quarrel. It was a “grave, terrible mistake” (her words), but she had turned herself in, apologized and accepted the consequences. Why couldn’t West do the same, she wondered aloud.

Meanwhile, West’s backers publicly criticized her. Her son’s bicycle was stolen. She devoted hours in the Gonzaga University law library in preparation for battles with experienced lawyers, whom she bested, even at the state Supreme Court. It was more burden than she’d bargained for but she accepted it anyway.

“I would love to pass the baton, but I see no one to pass the baton to,” she said at one point. In her unwavering determination to see the challenge through, Shannon Sullivan was teaching her son a lesson about citizenship and tenacity. She was teaching the rest of us, too.