ESSEX COUNTY JUVENILE PROBATION OFFICER REFLECTS ON
HER ROLE AS FIRST RESPONDER TO 9/11

When Essex County Juvenile Court Probation Officer Kim Howe Lawrence witnessed the devastating events of 9/11 unfold on television seven years ago, the former Victim Advocate phoned the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA) in Boston with an offer to help.

“I knew that people were going to need help with dealing with this,” said the 11-year Probation Officer who trained with the National Office for Victim Assistance to become a First Responder to national tragedies such as 9/ll and the Oklahoma City government building bombing in April 1995.

Lawrence was part of a team of 10 First Responders from Massachusetts – primarily government employees—who were dispatched to New York to assist the families of 9/11 victims as well as surviving victims and those who witnessed this tragic event.

By coincidence, Lawrence had called the National Office in New York prior to the planes crashing into the World Trade Center to check to see if her name was still on the roster.

“I don’t know what made me call that day. I had participated in the training in 1996 after the first World Trade Center bombing,” Lawrence recalled.

She continued, “The thing about the training that was helpful is that you learn how you can be helpful. When something like this happens, no one knows what to say. No one knows what to do.”

Lawrence participated in a one-week tour, during which she and her teammates spent each day at sites throughout the city, including fire stations, office buildings, and hospitals. The team conducted “de-briefings” and offered personal, individualized support to survivors at the Family Assistance Center set up by the National Red Cross.

“We were part of a Crisis Response team and spent each day working with people who were dealing with crises. We were each assigned roles, which were rotated. For example, there was the widow who needed a death certificate, the office worker who had no job to return to…we would walk the person through whatever they needed,” she said.

Lawrence, who works in the Salem office of the Essex County Juvenile Court Probation Department, uses this training often in her position as a Probation Officer. She was on hand to counsel middle school students whose classmate drowned.

“It is helpful to have this training so that I can help kids during a crisis or kids who are victims or witnesses to crimes,” she said.

Of her experience as a First Responder, Lawrence said, “I don’t think I ever cried so much in the week I worked as a First Responder to 9/11, but, I would never not have done it.”

Her boss, Chief Probation Officer Daniel Passacantilli, said “That’s the kind of Probation Officer she is. She is the same way with the children she works with.”