It was nearly a year and a half ago that Kathleen Jane — better known as KJ — Torgerson became the CEO of the 1st Judicial District Court Appointed Special Advocates Program, also known as North Idaho CASA.

But it's a career pointing to where her heart was always headed.

"I was guided here by all sorts of circumstance," Torgerson said, seated at a table in her downtown office on an overcast Monday. "While it’s a very challenging and emotionally difficult job, it is definitely where I’m meant to be."

On the walls of her office hang photos she took of children she met while visiting Vietnam and Africa. Their dark and innocent eyes peer out at those who gaze upon them, serving as a reminder that children everywhere need love, protection and care.

Torgerson has visited many places abroad to serve children in need, but a majority of her work is here in North Idaho, where hundreds of children each year suffer from violence, abuse and neglect.

Torgerson cherishes the value of serving others and changing their lives for the better.

"It's what gives me a quality of life," she said.

Each night, Torgerson prays with her two daughters, Riley, 13, and Taylor, 11.

"We always pray for God to give them guidance on the path of how they can serve others and protect the victims in our community," she said. "We do one thing every day to make this world a better place and to not do something that makes it a worse place."

Through her tireless work at CASA helping children get out of bad situations, Torgerson is making the world a better place, one kid at a time.

To help the nonprofit in its mission as it serves children in the five northern counties, the fourth annual CASA Uncorked event will be at the Hagadone Event Center from 5:30-9:30 p.m. Oct. 6. It will feature a live band, wine and beer trees, raffles, prizes, auctions and a social setting for those who support North Idaho CASA. Tickets are $100 and available at www.northidahocasa.org. All proceeds will benefit local kiddos.

"We’re encouraging supporters of our cause to come together and have fun in a light atmosphere in food, wine, raffles, live Latin jazz music," Torgerson said. "We won’t be sharing the hard stories at that event. It’s a time to show support and rally for the cause and enjoy other supporters’ company in a festive atmosphere."

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Can you describe a little bit of what CASA does?

"We have Advocates that serve as the voice of victims of child abuse. They’re not court employees, they make the choice to volunteer and stand up for these children. They advocate for the best interest of the child in and out of court. Their work extends far beyond court in that they facilitate the children receiving needed medical, mental health, dental and educational services. Through our CASA Kidz Closet, they also supply basic needs and supplies. They visit the children and witness their stories and then relay the information to court so the court can know how best to proceed in the interest that’s best for the child. They investigate facts of the case and write reports that the judge bases his or her recommendations on. We have very, very strict background checks and they have five weeks of training, a couple hours a week, then they also observe court hearings so they can get familiar with the judicial process."

How long have you been involved with CASA and why did you get involved?

"I have spent the large majority of my 20-year career working for cause-related nonprofits and human rights has always been a very strong interest. CASA has had a very special place in my heart for years. I volunteered as an Advocate for seven years before I became the CEO. I was interested in the leadership position long before I took it. I absolutely love all my staff and my board. They’re all very dedicated and a hard-working group of people and my staff, they’re so strong and so resilient. It might surprise you to know it’s a cheerful place with lots of laughter and support."

Can you describe a typical day or is every day different?

“Every day is different. There are some cycles. For example, summers typically have less cases come in because families seem to be healthier and outdoors more. When school starts and reporting increases, we’ll get a big increase. Same with the holidays. Right around Christmas, it tends to be quiet, but then right after the holidays, emotions are up and then we get more cases. That mold was broken recently in that in the last (few weeks) we’ve had in our area three babies die violent deaths at the hands of their caregivers. That week that we had two of them in one week was my hardest week, my most difficult week. It was very hard to focus because there is a lot of emotion involved for everyone in our office. Just the violence of the death was hard to absorb.”

What are a few challenges that you’ve faced in your time with CASA or that you face every day?

“Our biggest challenge is the difficulty in speaking about child abuse. We have a one-hour fundraising event in the spring where we actually share the stories of victims. It’s a difficult event; people don’t want to, in general, hear the hard truths, and for those who do we keep it to a very short one hour. That leads into that it’s a hard topic to fundraise for because the information’s confidential. I’ve had many members of our community tell me that they can’t hear about it, read about it, so it’s hard to fundraise on something that you can’t provide a visual, you can’t provide a story, so we’ve always just barely met our fundraising goal. We’re doing it differently this year. One of my goals is to increase the sustainability of the organization, so we’re working on developing an endowment and long-term supporters. Our caseload is up. We’re up 15 percent from last year, this is a nationwide trend and child abuse is just going to keep happening so we’re continually fundraising.

“My main frustration is the large majority of the parents that abuse their children are never criminally prosecuted. That can be very frustrating. And they may have lost the rights to parent their children, but they’re not criminally prosecuted, which means then they go out and they continue the cycle of abuse with making their own new children or finding other children. How do you break the cycle? There are many ways, but one of the ways would be to reduce the access that repeat offenders have to children. And we get repeat cases, cases where the parent lost their child and then they went and married a new person with children and started over. We have at least one case where the mother and the child are CASA kids. The mother was a CASA kiddo when she was an infant and she’s now had her own baby as a teen and has repeated the cycle of abuse and they are both in the system with different case numbers and different Advocates.”

Why is CASA important for our community? And do people even realize how much the services are needed?

“In Idaho it’s mandated by the Supreme Court that every child removed from their home due to abuse, neglect or violence, is appointed a CASA Advocate. Unfortunately, we get into situations where we don’t have enough. In August, it was such an unusual August this year, we had seven children sheltered at the same time from one family, which is a huge workload usually shared between two Advocates because they have to get to know every one of those children, hear their stories and write the report for each child. It was like Aug. 20, Advocates are on vacation, it’s a hard time of year to get someone to volunteer, that’s a hard case for someone to take — we don’t assign cases, we send them out by email and they reply if they want to take it — and so I had to withdraw from the case.

"When CASA can’t take a case due to funding, which is why we would have a lack of Advocates, largely, then we have to withdraw from the case, which costs the taxpayers a lot more money. Our Advocates are volunteers, and in just North Idaho they save over $200,000 a year, easily. That’s at $13 an hour. So the children that we’re pulled off of are assigned an attorney at $200 or more plus per hour, so they still end up with someone representing their best interest, but countless studies have shown an Advocate can serve them far better. An Advocate can spend more time with them, develop a relationship over years if needed, works harder to find the outside services that they need. Of course, the attorney represents them very well in court, but may not be out there talking with their teachers getting Individual Education Plans, dental appointments … The Advocates work countless hours getting services outside of court that are recommended to the judge that can be court-appointed then the advocate monitors that they’re still happening, such as counseling sessions.”

What are a few career highlights, both as an Advocate and now as the CEO, that you’re proud of?

“Any time a case goes to adoption is a really feel-good moment in here because we’ve successfully found that child a safe, nurturing, permanent home. That makes you feel good. There’s some legislation I hope to pass this year, and if I can get that passed it would be a personal highlight. I would like to get past a 17th exemption to the 9-1-1 reporting exemptions. There’s currently 16 exemptions that if you make a call, it’s anonymous. Reporting child abuse is not an anonymous call in the state of Idaho, so I want to make that the 17th exemption so that people can safely report child abuse.

“Another thing I’m working on that I’m really proud about is I’ve been working hard with partners — agencies and individuals in our community who work with a child either proactively, during a trauma which is largely first-responders, or afterward helping them to heal from their trauma — so working with those partners we’ve created the Coalition of Preventing Child Abuse. This is very new and our goal is to help us understand the state of child abuse in our community and what we can do to reduce its prevalence. Part of it is we’re calling for our community to take action and join our coalition, volunteer to work with children, become more aware of children around you and speak up when you feel like something is wrong. A big goal of mine is to have that be successful.”

If you could tell the community anything about how they can help; if you could be like, “Hey community, listen up, KJ’s talking,” what would you say?

“I would say while we live in an amazing resort town that feels so safe, please know that there are over 400 children every year who suffer from abuse and neglect. And since our town is small, these children live within miles of all of us. While yes, it is a very hard topic to discuss, we can’t not discuss it. As a community, we have to work together to reduce the prevalence. The end result of doing so is there will be more healthy children and healthy families to be contributing to our wonderful community. Get involved in one of these organizations — volunteer, support the causes, ask the hard questions and know it’s OK to be emotional hearing the answers. And let those emotions motivate you to make a pledge of your own of one or two things that you will do in the next year to better the situation, whether it’s for an individual child you know, a neighborhood, a school, a nonprofit.”

How does it feel at the end of the day to know you’re helping change the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens — our children?

“I love my work because I have never had a day I dread going to this job. There might be the super challenging or frustrating days, but I see success in individual cases. I see services being provided to families that never had them before that really do help educate them and help them to grow. Advocates come in every day because they are here because they want to be here and they add such a great atmosphere to our office because they’re publicly serving and all their hearts are in it and they are emotional. It makes it for a very powerful workplace. I do feel like I’m helping to protect the victims of the world — back to my prayer with my girls — and helping to make this world a better place every day.”