Oral History Program Alicia Rizzi Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 27 August 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Alicia Rizzi Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 27 August 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Rizzi, Alicia, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 27 August 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Alicia Rizzi 27 August 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Alicia Rizzi conducted on August 27, 2019, in her home in Ogden, Utah, by Sarah Langsdon. Alicia discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I’m here interviewing Alicia Rizzi at her home. It is August 27, 2019, about 10:30. Alicia Rizzi, when and where were you born? AR: Born in Brooklyn, New York, June 3, 1969. Grew up there a little bit, Kindergarten, and went back and visited a little bit. Loved New York, mostly ‘cause of the connection with my parents, of course. SL: What’s your dad’s name and what did he do for a living? AR: Dad’s name is John Rizzi and he was a computer programmer. SL: Programmer, and your mom? AR: My mom is Sue Rizzi and she did lots of different jobs and got her degree in Public Relations while we were growing up. SL: You moved to California when you were about seven, did you move to Northern California, I’m assuming with IBM? AR: Yes, Menlo Park for a couple years and then San Jose after that. We moved again a few years later. I was twelve or thirteen, to where they live now, or still live now. SL: And so was your brother born in New York? AR: Yeah, he was born in New York as well. He’s older than I am, so he had a little more time to grow up in New York. I think he likes that he grew up in California, but he really loves the city, so he loves going back and visiting. My dad’s side of 2 the family is super, it’s huge, he has nine brothers and sisters and they all had kids. Yes, they’ve all had kids and the majority of them spread out a little bit. A lot of New Jersey, an aunt in Oklahoma, Florida. SL: Kind of all over. AR: So cousins have spread out a little bit. All the aunts and uncles have stayed by the city, pretty much. Three of them, I think, don’t live there. SL: So what was it like growing up in Northern California? AR: Amazing. I loved it. Menlo Park was super cool, my parents, or my mom at least, kind of wishes they had stayed there. But San Jose, where they moved to, was perfect. Like all year round, I played sports, soccer mostly. They had winter season, you played outside and you played all year round. It was amazing, I loved it. It’s grown a ton, I think it would be a little different now. Which is hard to believe, cause it was a big city then. But it was awesome. SL: So when you were little, who did you look up to the most? AR: Probably my brother, just cause I’m kind of an introvert. I guess when I was little I got out, and sports helped me with that, so coaches helped, teachers. I had a couple female physical education teachers that kind of helped me be a little more extroverted. My mom was huge. SL: So when you were getting ready to graduate high school, was going on and pursuing an education something your parents pushed? AR: So, yes, of course. My mom was going through college the whole time we were growing up, my dad is a genius. I mean, he is ridiculously smart, and has a couple degrees. He got those pretty early, so it was encouraged. My brother 3 went off to college, but I tried it and it just wasn’t for me. They encouraged it to a point where they left it up to me. I mean, I didn’t get great grades through high school, and they helped me out to get the SATs done and things like that, but it just wasn’t my thing. I loved sports, I loved being active. I went to college for a minute and then I was like, “Mmm, not my thing,” so I joined the military. SL: What branch did you join? AR: I joined the Air Force. Looked around a little bit and joined the Air Force, and that brought me here. SL: Where did you do basic training? AR: San Antonio, Texas, and super excelled academically, which is super odd. I mean I never did anything good academically, but in basic training I super excelled. I’m motivated physically, so when I can do things really good physically, I end up being able to concentrate better on academic side of it. Super excelled and got a graduate pin. I can’t even think of the name of it now. Honors graduate pin? I don’t know. That was super cool. SL: Were there a lot of women in your...? AR: Well, in basic training it’s all women, I mean you have like brother-sister flights. So you train with men, but the class is always women. I would assume that they still do it that way. SL: How was that? Was there a lot of comradery? AR: Yeah, yeah, and a lot of competition. But coming together as a team is what basic training is all about. Because I was doing so well, it let me be an extrovert a little bit more and help lead. They call it leadership, I call it helping, in basic 4 training, cause I’m just like a stay-under-the-radar, I love helping people, but don’t put me out front cause then I just start to be an idiot. SL: Your nerves get the better of you. AR: Yeah, but I still keep in touch with a few of the people that I went through basic training with, with the help of Facebook. So that’s kind of fun. SL: So when you got out of basic training, where were you stationed? AR: Here. SL: Oh, Hill? AR: Yeah, so I got on the job training, I went home after graduation for a little bit and then reported here to Hill and learned my job at Hill, and doing books. So I came straight here. SL: So what was your job at Hill? AR: I was a plumber. I learned how to be a plumber, which is awesome. I worked for civil engineering. Not a lot of women once I got here. Not a lot women in pluming. But met some super amazing people. Only did four years here, though. SL: So what was it like being probably one of a handful of women? One of the only ones? AR: Well, in civil engineering, probably a handful. Not a lot leadership positions, but a good amount of strong, strong women. More than office. Do you know what I mean? I played softball for the Air Force as well, and for the base, so I ended up meeting a decent amount of officers that also played, and they tended to be type A, a little more strong willed. In the military, in civil engineering, of course, It’s all those trades, plumbing, painting, electric, firefighting. Anything that puts together 5 our world, like a city. That’s civil engineering. Security force has become a part of that. So they’re all people who do physical labor jobs, mostly. It was good. Found a decent amount of women that were very like-minded. SL: So you only stayed in the military four years? AR: Yeah, and then I realized that I was a lesbian at that point and it was at the cusp of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” So, I’m not a big... liar, although I started living that dual life where you can’t say anything, but you can’t not. That part started to be kind of difficult, and I wanted to go to school finally, full time, and it was difficult to do part time in the military with the job that I had. SL: You ended up not re-enlisting. AR: And going to school at Weber. SL: So what did you study while you were at Weber? AR: Well, I started with Logistics, cause all that is so my personality, put things in order, task oriented person, but I took a class in Criminal Justice, like a 101 class and Intro to Psych as well, so I ended up dual majoring and getting two degrees in general Psychology and Criminal Justice. It was amazing, ‘cause the law was super cool and it integrated with the social aspect of psychology, so I ended up in the social science building pretty much full time. SL: So when did you graduate from Weber? AR: So, funny, I graduated high school in 1987, and graduated college in 1997. SL: That’s not bad with your military career. AR: Well, it ended up, I took courses here and then that applied, but it took four years to really go full time and work part time. 6 SL: And that’s with a dual major. So you graduated in 1997. What did you end up doing with your degree or where did you go from there? AR: Did a few different things for a couple of years, and a friend of mine that I played soccer with—who is an amazing woman, Eleanor Plaido. She’s since passed. But she worked for DDO and volunteered for Ogden PD and she said that the sheriff’s department was building a new jail and they were hiring a bunch of people, so in ’99 she let me know and introduced me to somebody who worked there full time, Jewel Feukes. Then I applied, and in between I had applied to the prison a couple times. They were in a freeze. Like I was in a spot where they weren’t hiring, which is good. It ended up being good, cause I applied, went through all their stuff and got a job with Weber County, and I would have hated... I would have ended up moving down south cause I would have hated... SL: The commute. AR: Yeah, not a commuter. Always tried to find a way to be close to work. SL: So did Weber County Sheriffs put you through the police academy? AR: Well, they had their own academy, and because they were building, they coordinated to send some people down to Fredhouse at Point of the Mountain, and did for the first three years after they built the jail, they did their own. Which was super cool cause a lot of the instructors worked at the county. So I started at Keysole, the old facility, and then we moved here after I started. SL: So when you started working for the Sheriff's Office, were there a lot of women. AR: There were a decent amount of women when I started, and come to find out cause I spent twenty years there, it was mostly because it was such a big hiring. 7 A lot of promotions went on at the time, so the few women that were there already ended up getting promoted and a lot of the initial hires of the time, in the next few years ended up promoting as well. Initially, there were a good handful. Not a majority, not even fifty percent, but in the jail itself, I bet there were... it was better than the military in civil engineering. Probably a third, maybe as much as that. SL: Did it stay that high, or did women start dropping? AR: I bet it lasted that way for maybe the first two or three years, so at the beginning of the 2000s and with the move, it didn’t keep up. It was almost obvious, like they didn’t believe in trying to promote females as much as males. They really went off that... although lots of women score high, you get into that atmosphere, sometimes it makes it difficult to test for those promotions, because it becomes really obvious. Rejection for people becomes difficult. They settle into what they know and they’re just like, “Meh.” I had people like Jewel Feukes who hired me and Florrie Peterson who is super pioneer in that field, and Marcy that started before me and super encouraged like, “Get promoted, get promoted.” I got promoted fairly quickly to Corporal, so I was like, “Ok, I’ll be a sergeant at the beginning.” Every time they promoted a female, it was like, “Yes!” Depending mostly on who that female was, but like I say, for the first three years, they actually did that, there were a decent amount of women that promoted and stayed in those positions, but it super dropped off. SL: So, were you pretty much in the jail, were you out in the community? What was your job? 8 AR: I was a floor officer for the first eight plus years, so I was in the jail that whole time, and working with inmates is pretty amazing. Stressful and it gets old, but that was good. Then I did inmate management, I was an inmate management coordinator, the head of the inmate management committee. It’s coordinating everybody and liaisoning between inmates and staff, figuring out where people should go, where they should be, whether they should come to our jail from the prison or the feds, and immigration at first. It was coordinating how many you have and how many you need and where they need to go and who should be managed differently and things like that. I loved that job, it was amazing. Being that liaison position and working with all the different people was pretty amazing, without really having to see them. Emails and phone calls were... and I’m awesome that way. Super good that way. SL: When you were on the floor, was your floor men, women, mixture? AR: So in the jail they are separated. At first they put us in the women’s section exclusively. Mostly because there were only so many women, and I was a corporal. You have little teams for each section, so the corporals are in charge of the team as well as the area. At first, I would mostly be in the women’s pod, but we complained enough that I ended up being with the men. They’re different to manage, they’re funner to manage, to be honest. SL: That’s interesting that you say the men were easier. Is there a reason? Why did you feel that way? AR: Men’s personality, they’re a little more straight forward. When you watch them you can figure out pecking orders a lot easier. They’re a little more easily 9 categorized. You can manage them easier because you can narrow things down a lot. Women are catty and when they live together, things aren’t as obvious, they don’t escalate and de-escalate as clearly either. Men are a little more easily manipulated, in a good way, manipulated. Of course I’m not a big, “Yeah, let’s go in there and fight!” At first, of course, very responsive to that, that’s our job, and trying to avoid situations that get physical and trying to figure out how to get all those people to live together without hurting themselves or preying on each other. So men are a little clearer and it’s a little easier to pick out who’s going to do what. So easier to manipulate in that way, to manage it in a not super violent way. Women are harder, and like I said catty. They hold onto things differently and men, they fight, you can figure out what went on and why it happened and it’s pretty cut and dry. Women, who the hell knows. When you ask them you only get half truths, so they’re a little harder to manage and it really gets on me. When the men are nice about it, you know what they’re doing. When the women are nice about it, you’re like “Argh! What’s going on?” Like they sneak up on you better. SL: Did you have any trouble with male inmates being a female officer? AR: Yeah, of course. You have to really try to keep things professional and yet be that person still, so they think they’re still a person. I mean, when you’re a robot, when you walk around there like a robot, then they feel impersonal. So I’m a super personal person in that case, I’m super extroverted in that case too, cause I have to be. I have to talk to people and one-on-one with people or small groups of people is super easy for me. So balancing being personable and professional 10 at the same time... Of course, people get, “Hey, when I get out of here, let’s go for a drink!” They’ll tell you flat out, “I love you.” It’s balancing it and explaining to them that there’s still a difference between us. But for me it wasn’t hard. Very masculine, and the military was the same way. Get a lot fewer men that work that angle, but everybody works that angle. Male or female, in the jail, there’s always a group of people that want to get closer to you, ask you questions about your personal life, things like that. But like I said, super personable to be able to manage. Like having them recognize you as a human being and recognizing them as a human being, still in that odd environment, lends to less management issues, I felt. I’m sure some people would be like I needed a heavier hand, but I think I managed great. My team usually followed the we’re there to not see people hurt each other or hurt themselves. It was easy to be like, “Yeah, we can talk that way. You can feel however you want, but it's not going to go back and forth.” It wasn’t hard to do. SL: You were on the floor for eight years? AR: A little over eight years, about eight and a half, and then I went to IMC and the management. SL: The management, and how long were you there? Were you there for the rest of your career? AR: I wish. I was there for another about eight and a half. Well, I did classifications for a little bit in between, which was my dream job and I loved that and I excelled at that and everybody knew me for that. I only did that for about a year and a half and then I did the management, which was super similar, but lots more to do. 11 Classifications is very central to where you put people and how they advance within the jail. So about a year and a half there and then eight years, in management, then they put me back on the floor for the last little bit, so another year and a half back on the floor. SL: What was it like going back on the floor? AR: Super different, different to me. It wasn’t very different from when I was there before, but I had learned a lot of the big picture, so going back on the floor was super different, mentally a little different. Went back to the men’s section and loved it. I really do love the inmates, managing the inmates. It ends up being politics and policy that mess with the whole everything takes forever to get implemented, if it gets implemented, and things could be done a little differently. But going back on the floor was fun. Just that. Some policies and procedures and administration, there were some things I would like that they changed, and the older I got the less safe I felt on the floor. I had a really good team, so I worked with really good people. On our shift there were a couple other women that I definitely would have on my team, but I ended up working with all men, with only the men inmates, the last year and a half. But safety wise, I felt safe-ish. As safe as you can feel when you’re a corrections officer, but there were things that we were doing that could have been done better to keep the inmates more safe, and less threatening to each other as well as us. You can never avoid that, but I think we could have done things better. In our section, I think we did a really good job of that. Not as many fights in while we were there, but fights nonetheless. Things became a little more strikingly obvious when I went back. 12 SL: So were you in charge of your team again? The team of men? AR: Yeah. SL: How was that? Were they accepting of you? AR: Always. I’ve had a few guys work with me, and I always say work with me cause they’re not working for me. We’re in there as a team, I’m there to make sure everybody does it within policy. No one wants to get in trouble, and it wasn’t always my way, I think they liked that about me. It was an everybody effort. Everybody got to make decisions, it’s not me who is always going, “Do it this way.” So it worked. The group of guys that I ended up being with I was like... “I’m not, I won’t work with...” and because I’d been there long enough it was pretty easy to be like, “Yeah, I won’t work with that person.” So got a lot of trainees come through. A few of them were kind of like that, but because they’re trainees, I think they settle back and don’t push the, “Oh my God, I’m working for a woman, a woman’s training me,”. I think they took the traits that we taught in our group with them as much as possible and used them, which is nice. Like even when you get those guys that just want to come in and yell and fight and tell people they’re doing things wrong all the time, it’s nice when they walk away and realize you totally have to do it a different. You can’t be that guy that just goes in there, enforces the rules all the time, cause you’re not going to make it. There’s going to be so many problems, and you won’t be able to keep up with it. Eventually somebody’s going to hurt you. So it’s nice to teach that balance. It’s kind of like with me and my ex, to be honest. My son got two sides of the, to how you do things. 13 SL: So you mentioned—and like I said, if you don’t want to answer—you have a son? AR: Yes. Well, I have three. I have a son, Marrick, he’s down in college at UVU. I had him with a previous partner. She had him, and I’m the adopted second parent. Legally got to that when he was, I think I want to say he was two. We knew we were going to do it when he was born. It took a minute, of course not on my part, but more on biological mom’s part, and she finally said, “Let’s do this.” SL: Was it a difficult thing? I don’t know how the courts treat same-sex adoptions. AR: So, oddly enough it was not difficult. It was interesting, sitting in court. We started it and got all our paperwork in and did all we had to do, and it might be because she was biological at the time and there wasn’t really. A man-woman roadmap. But then at the end of it all, the legislation went through that they were going to take that away. So date wise, we went in right after, like if anybody else had filed before that, they wouldn’t have been able to, but it went through without a hitch. We didn’t get any backlash. A lot of people that we knew are involved in legal stuff now, but at the time it went super smooth. It wasn’t a big deal. All the right people were there, I guess, and made it work really easy without too much craziness. SL: Obviously you and that partner were not together when you met Marcy? AR: We raised Marrick and just after he turned six, I left my partner, that’s when the process got a little crazy. I met Marcy and moved in, stayed here in Ogden, and they’re in North Ogden, so not ridiculously far away. SL: So what was it like then coming in, now having three children? 14 AR: Different. Marcy and I did that kind of separately for the first little bit, I mean we got to know each other and everything, and let them get to know each other and play with each other. I wasn’t a huge, “I want a kid,” person, so I totally had to change my mindset, ‘cause I felt like when we talked about having a kid, I talked my mind around having a kid, and that was it. Like I wrapped my mind around having a kid, and being able to focus everything on him. Marcy’s personality with that, and trying to let them be parents was different to wrap my mind around. Wyatt and Cheyenne, they were so tiny, and it was easy to let their personalities dictate how everything went. I kind of play off how Marcy parents and, I set a few boundaries that fit for me and they’ve all been amazing kids. Like it’s been easy to discipline them without being a ridiculous parent. Apparently, though, we are stricter than, which is super crazy, than some of their friends’ parents. Of course that’s from their perspective, which, they’re the ones being affected. But I think it’s just restrictions because when I look at how we’ve parented, it’s mostly been boundaries, like they knew if they crossed this boundary it would... SL: There were consequences. AR: There was something that was going to happen. Luckily, we’re not corporal punishment parents, which is different than our upbringing. We found a decent amount of ways to discipline them without consequences that have made it ridiculous. I think they understand that they got their punishment, and they move on, and they don’t really make those same mistakes again. For the most part. SL: Maybe they think ‘cause they have parents who were police officers that you might be a little stricter than the normal. 15 AR: Yeah, I’m not sure how that comes into play. SL: You’ve probably seen a lot. You’re like, “I don’t want you going down that road.” AR: Yeah, it can be an ugly place. But tried not to bring Correctional Officer Rizzi home, and I think Marcy tried not to too, but on occasion of course you do things that are very similar. It is like raising kids. These guy got the gentler side of it, but on occasion they got “locked down.” Like, super similar. Got a little louder than normal. Turned out pretty good. SL: So what made you decide to finally retire from the Sheriff's Office. AR: I hit my twenty years. For sure, making it to my twenty years. When I first started, it was really all about doing the job. That middle job became a balancing of politics and policy and administration and doing your job. The last part became the pressures of doing your job and the politics and you just don’t want to deal with all that pressure. The years of all that pressure builds up, so twenty years was enough. SL: Did you ever advance beyond corporal? AR: No. I tested multiple times and it just didn’t go my way. But didn’t see a lot of women promoted in that span either. Not to say they didn’t try. SL: So looking back over your career, are there women you can look back that were mentors or inspired you? AR: Oh yeah. Well, almost all the ones that were promoted. Florrie Peterson, she was promoted to lieutenant. When I started she was a sergeant, a lot because she did the testing between the facilities. When we got lots of people, she had the opportunities. Tracy Taylor, who is still there, she works at the court. She’s a 16 lieutenant and promoted to lieutenant about the same time after we had moved to the big facility. Jewel Feukes, she’s passed away. She was amazing, and like I said, Eleanor Plaido. She was the chief at DDO, among other things. She was friends with Jewel, and then I met Jewel and she was a sergeant at the time. She also made lieutenant before she passed away. Gosh, there were a few other officers there that Heather Davies was an officer, she’s now a sergeant there. Just people who were doing it right, and doing it well. Understanding where you were coming from as well, and appreciating the kind of officer you were and what you had to teach others. As a corporal I ended up FTO-ing a lot of people. Some women who are still there and did super well and are amazing. I have to say that all the women that came through, for me, are amazing, but they definitely categorize in “I would definitely work with them” and “I would definitely not work with them.” A decent amount of women have come in and through. Some make a bad name for women and some keep it going. SL: Would you like to see more women going into the...? AR: Oh, I’d love it. I think jails and prison should be run by women. I think women tend to be able to keep things functioning more smoothly. It’s hard to find men that can do both. And there are a lot of them, but when you get into this career field, you’re either too soft and you’re even. You tend not to be on both extremes. Even if you’re a hard-ass and you’re like, “I love to fight, I’m on the SAT team,” you have that feminine side that’s softer, and understanding. Tend to. Of course you have the extremes of everybody, but I think that women do it a lot better. Strength-wise as well. I mean, when there’s a big fight, women tend to have a 17 little bit more calming effect, on men especially, but incarcerated women as well. Just, the presence of women in a jail and prison is different. It seems to work better. SL: That would be an interesting social experiment. To see how well a female-run prison functions and what problems arise if any. AR: Well, when you insert males into... females prisons as well, it creates a different dynamic. Wouldn’t be super difficult to do, like an all-female/all-female, which has never been a reality, because men have mostly been corrections officers. Men have always managed women, and when the women managed only the women in our jail, like the women are always the women. They always do their thing, the woman way, and there were certain problems that you just didn’t have cause you didn’t have the men around to create them. I think women have a better effect over all, not counting the extremes. SL: So, how would you define “women’s work?” AR: Heh. Well, stereotypically how everybody through the 1970s and 1980s still saw women, being housewives and keeping the house clean. But I grew up different, my mom cooked for us even though she was working, but I never saw that as her job. As a kid somebody had to cook for you, like, “Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?” ‘Cause asking my dad would be useless. I saw, “that’s my mom’s job,” because that’s who I ask, cause I’ve seen my dad cook. So I think as I grew up, I kind of made up my mind I can cook, but that’s not what I’m going to do. I didn’t want to have kids. I grew up trying to learn myself not having those roles. So like the one offensive thing that people can say to me is if they call me, “Get in the kitchen, 18 woman.” So when I hear people call somebody else, “Hey, woman,” or however they’re using it, it’s very derogatory for me. So who does what? I definitely learned the 50s, 60s style “Mom cooks, mom takes care of the house, mom takes care of the kids,” like that was the style I grew up with. But I don’t buy in, and I’m not a replica of it either. I think women who do that are absolutely amazing, but only if it’s their choice. Makes it difficult here in Utah, cause I know plenty of men who have made a choice to be “stay-at-moms.” I don’t buy in. I don’t want to buy in, I don’t want other people to buy in. Like, do what makes you feel good. There shouldn’t be a defined, “That’s women’s work, that’s men’s work.” My dad, computer programming, such a gender neutral kind of occupation, it doesn’t present masculine or feminine. My dad and my brother, neither of them were super sportsy; they did sports and they did manly things, but so did I, because those are the things that make me feel good. I’ve always striven towards “manly” things, like things that men did. I’ve always been one of those, “Girls can do it too.” So separating them makes it really difficult for me. SL: That makes sense. Before I ask the last question, anything you wanted to add that we skipped over? AR: I think we covered just about everything. SL: So my last question is: how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped and influence history, your community, and you personally? AR: So I look up to my mom. She’s a big factor, and she grew up in the aftermath of all that. My parents were very neutral in my upbringing, like didn’t really over-force 19 anything. But my mom was always very obvious about all those better people. The people who’d made things better, and voting was always her big shot. “You’re going to vote, you’re going to vote.” She was that mom, my dad was kind of more like, “Eh. Yeah, you should vote.” So voting was super important and I was lucky enough to be able to vote for a president when I turned eighteen, it was one of those years, so that was super cool. You watch all those people, all those women that came before us for every step that we make, like, when I find out who did certain things, I’m like, “Yes! And it was a woman!” I think I see that a lot more now, though. I think I grew into that, that singular action and all that change has got us here. In the sheriff’s department, Flory Petersen is an idol, ‘cause she was that pioneer. She worked that era, where things changed over to make it possible that we could just walk in and show them what we could do and do it. So all those people before, and hopefully I did it too. Hopefully I involved myself in that to keep that going and get more people to be involved, and have it be more gender neutral. SL: Shouldn’t matter. AR: It’s what’s up here [points to head] that pushes it through, and makes the decisions. I get that it’s scary to white men of the past, but hopefully we’re raising boys that do it different. I think, impartially, that Marcy and I have done that amazingly, our boys are ridiculous. Like they don’t see that the same way. They’ll do things differently. SL: Definitely. I think this generation coming up will... 20 AR: Yeah. They’re not separating it the same. Women can do anything. There isn’t a job that a woman can’t, and to be honest, they always have run everything. They unfortunately haven’t been in that spot where they make the final go ahead. They’ll make it work, even the bad things... It’s women that are making it work. I’ve bee a lot more cognizant of looking for women-run things. The whole office and all their assistants and the people who can do their job, they’re all women. Attorneys, you get a male attorney, but every single person that does all the work tends to be a woman. Camille Neider, I’ve known Camille for quite some time, and her partner for even longer. But when she went for that judgeship, and got it, I was like “Oh.” There in corrections, in my one job, you didn’t see a lot of female judges and when Judge Heffernan left, I can’t think of her name, but Ogden City had a female judge as well. Once they were gone there just hasn’t been any female influence and it’s hard to see, because that means something. And that’s stupid. It’s dumb that, like if you have this spot, there’s women in that. But all these people who make all the decisions work, they’re just mouthpieces, and they’re women. If it has to be, it has to be, and just keep pushing hopefully the right people up into that spot. It’s hard to be that person. You’re like, “Ok, I can do this,” but it’s so hard. SL: You feel like you’re standing alone up there. AR: Yeah. I mean, even when people are like, “Go! Go!” And male support and you’re just like, “Uh.” It’s hard to step up there and do that. So, to all those women who do, thank goodness that they’re breaking, and I idolize every single one of them, 21 and give kudos to all those people behind, just pushing and making it work. Make the choice to work for a woman, that would be amazing, but there’s just so few. SL: Well, thank you.