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All Karen Ramey-Torres ever wanted was to make things better.
“I’d like to continue to make a difference in Sterling,” Torres said. “I grew up here, this is my community. If I can still make a difference, I want to do that.”
At the end of this month, Torres will retire after spending nearly 35 years trying to make a difference in people’s lives. Torres will retire Aug 31 after eight years as director of the Colorado State University Reginal Engagement Center in Sterling.
Although in her early 70s, Torres still has energy to pour into projects that appeal to her. But after a lifetime of entrepreneurial public service, she said it’s time to let someone else take the reins of what she’s built.
“So many people have asked me when I was going to retire, I thought, maybe I should. Maybe it’s time to take a step back, re-center, spend more time with family.”
A reception from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Friday at the Engagement Center will celebrate Torres’ years with the center.
Karen Ramey graduated Sterling High School in 1967 and enrolled at Colorado State University with a major in psychology. There she met fellow Sterling native Dan Torres whose family, coincidentally, had leased farmland from Ramey’s grandfather. The couple married and Karen left school to follow her husband’s career, ending up back in Sterling where he taught Spanish for 30 years.
Karen Torres stayed home at first, but when their children were old enough to be somewhat independent, she returned to CSU to finish her degree. Armed with the sheepskin, she secured a post as a caseworker for the Washington County Human Services Department. A year and a half later, she moved to Logan County Human services, first as a case worker and later in a variety of positions.
During that time, Torres and a co-worker developed a day treatment program with the Re-1 Valley School District for emotionally challenged students. She said the experience of creating something that made a difference in people’s lives was thrilling, and something she wanted to keep doing.
“That’s when I realized that what lights my fire is making an impact on the world,” she said. “We called it Bridgebuilders, as in building a bridge between the students and the school.”
By 2006, Torres was seeing limitations in some of the family service areas of her job, especially when it came to supervised visits of parents with children who had been removed from their homes.
“The space (Human Services) had just wasn’t a very positive space,” she said. “The toys were castoffs the staff had donated, and it wasn’t a positive experience.”
Inspired by the success of Bridgebuilders, she took a leap of faith, invested $10,000 and launched the Family Resource Center. The point of Family Resource Center, she said, was to provide a more ideal setting for reuniting children with their parents for supervised visits. It’s still a core service of FRC.
By 2014 FRC was doing well enough that the one program had grown into three – parental visitations, a teen program and parent education – and the budget had grown to $250,000. Ever the entrepreneur, Torres began looking for a new way to change lives.
“I felt it was time for someone else to take over,” she said.
That something else was directorship of the Engagement Center. It would be her biggest challenge, largely because of the square mileage it encompassed.
“This is a regional center, and that means it serves a big area,” she said. “I saw this position as a chance to increase the influence of this center in the community.”
Torres has worked to bring a number of services, many of them benefitting the elderly, to the center. The latest effort is a survey of how to make Logan County a more age-friendly community.
Whoever replaces Torres will have their work cut out for them.
“The work is not done,” she said. “The community is starting to know its potential, what can be achieved here.”
Asked what she’ll miss most about leaving the working world, Torres said it’s the people.
“I’ll miss the people I get to meet, the ideas that people have, the opportunities to make something new or better,” she said. “But I think it will be okay.”
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