Richards wants to advocate for mentally ill

She credits her days on a farm for her interest in service.

By Alyssa Meza

Published Oct. 27, 2008

Cathy Richards, 55, said she didn't become interested in helping people. She was born that way.

Richards, the Democratic candidate for Boone County Public Administrator, said she has always been a servant and attributes that to being raised on a farm in Rucker. 

She was the sixth of eight children and described living on the farm as a hard but content life. On the farm, she was in charge of taking care of the animals and her younger siblings.

"How I was taught, you take care of the others around you, then you worry about yourself," Richards said. 

Richards believes that birth order affects personality. She credits being a middle child for why she is a negotiator, mediator and leader. Growing up, Richards said she was always the representative advocating for her younger siblings. 

"We go to bat for those that people are picking on," Richards said.

Caring for her animals and siblings on the farm fostered her self-proclaimed greatest strength, interpersonal skills. She said she notices when people are hurt and can read it on their faces.

Those skills have served her well, as she worked as a nurse in a veteran's affairs hospital and with learning disabled children at Fayette Middle School.

At the hospital, she worked in the hospice feeding, cleaning wounds and bedsores and taking diabetes checks.

Once on rotation at the hospital, Richards said she was asked to attend to a middle-aged man with early onset Alzheimer's disease. The man was bored so she sang him a Christmas carol. While she was singing, he was able to focus on her and tears welled up in his eyes, she said.

Knowing that people can be completely dependent on others "makes me love the fact that I am here to help someone," Richards said.

Richards received an associate's degree from Columbia College and her bachelor's degree in business from William Woods University. She has been the office manager for Boone County Commission for eight years.

Richards believes that the ability and experience are more important than degrees.

"I am a true believer that your qualifications on paper don't mean a thing if you cannot project it," Richards said.

She believes her life experiences prepare her to be a public administrator.

"All my life I've prepared for this job," Richards said. "It's essentially the culmination of my life experiences and skills."

She has worked as a nurse and paraprofessional. She has taught Sunday school and mentored a child in Kansas City.

In high school, Richards was the lead singer for a band called The Field Grannies, the slang for a Kentucky warbler. She also enjoys playing golf and painting. One of her paintings hangs in the Roger B. Wilson Government Center.

Eighty percent of the clients the public administrator serves have a mental illness. Richards said this is problematic because there is a "terrible shortage of available beds for mental health (in Boone County)," Democratic incumbent Connie Hendren said. Most of her 392 clients are on Medicaid and do not have full-time employment to receive health benefits. The public administrator, who is their legal guardian, is the one who takes care of those people when they are sick. 

A difficult part of this is that the public administrator has to find doctors and specialists willing to provide service to the clients.

At a public forum Oct. 16 at the Columbia Public Library sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Richards said helping find doctors and specialists willing to provide service to the clients will be the biggest challenge.

Richards believes each client has something unique to offer and said she will give them the best quality of life she can.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of them," she said.

Richards plans on being an advocate and bringing attention to the inadequate care of the mentally ill. 

"I think that we are all going to have to be advocates for these people and mean it," Richards said.