A Tribute to Laurie Girand

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with legislative advocacy — the kind that doesn't show up in a press release. It's the early flights to Sacramento, the hallway conversations with staffers who may or may not remember your name, the fifteenth version of a presentation built for a legislator who has ninety seconds to give you. It's showing up again after the bill stalls. Laurie Girand has done that work, year after year, without ever asking for the credit it deserves.

As the driving force behind Advocates for Responsible Treatment, Laurie has been the kind of dogged, determined presence that meaningful legislation actually requires — not the flashy kind, but the kind built one relationship, one briefing, one closed door opened at a time. I've stood shoulder to shoulder with her in those Sacramento hallways, both of us making the case to as many assembly members and senators as would listen, and I can say without exaggeration: I would not have gotten nearly as far as I have without her beside me.

What strikes me most, even after all these years, is that Laurie is still the one teaching me something I didn't know. She has sat through every meeting. Prepared more presentations than anyone should reasonably have to. Spent countless hours working legislators through the details, again and again, because she understands that policy doesn't move on passion alone — it moves on preparation, patience, and someone willing to outlast the process.

She is, in every sense of the word, a true shero of this movement. And the foundation she has laid — through sheer persistence, through showing up when it would have been easier not to — is one the rest of us now get to walk out on. My hope is that every hour she has poured into this work comes back to her tenfold, in the lives it saves and the system it finally forces to change.

Thank you, Laurie. For all of it.