A Foundation of Helping People

At only 24 years old, Jake Erickson has already crossed off a lot of life’s major milestones. This February, he landed his first big job as coordinator of the Door County Sexual Assault Center in Sturgeon Bay, and in late June he was lucky enough to marry and move in with the love of his life.

One might think that moving through life so quickly would wear someone down. But when I met Jake at the Cornerstone Pub on the Monday after his post-marriage vacation, his energy and enthusiasm was infectious. He spoke so much that he barely touched his food, and he was excited to reflect on what brought him to Door County.

“My grandparents actually have lived in Sister Bay since I’ve been in diapers,” says Jake, who is originally from Chicago but attended college at the University of Kentucky. “I’ve been coming up for long weekends and holidays, and I really fell in love with it – but never really thought I’d live up here.”

That all changed three summers ago when he met Claire Toerpe, now Erickson, at the Red Putter.

“I’ll be honest, it was really awkward,” says Jake. “I’m a pretty personable guy, and I remember looking at her and every time I’d glance at her I’d get so nervous that I didn’t know what to say.”

Claire remembers that initial meeting going much the same way.

“We’re both really talkative and outgoing people,” she says, “but there we were both really awkward and shy.”

Jake’s next few meetings with Claire were similarly embarrassing, but the pair finally clicked at, of all places, the folk festival in Sister Bay, where they discovered that they had a common love for living in the moment.

“We’re both really spontaneous,” says Claire, “We’ll say ‘Let’s go longboard down this hill,’ or ‘Let’s build this really disgusting sandwich combo and eat it.’”

It was with this sense of spontaneity in mind that, after a lengthy long-distance relationship, Jake decided to move to Door County, hoping that he’d find something to do with the bachelor’s in Social Work that he received from the University of Kentucky. When he made the move, he never imagined that he’d become the coordinator of a sexual assault center.

“If someone would have told me that, I would’ve said they were nuts,” he says. “What does someone like that even do? But I found out that the title is just a title and the foundation of social work is still there, which is helping people.”

Before he moved from Kentucky, Jake worked as an investigator and ongoing caseworker with Child Protective Services. As coordinator at the Door County Sexual Assault Center, which is a branch of Family Services of Northeastern Wisconsin, he also works as an investigator and a caseworker, this time dealing with instances of sexual assault and abuse.

In addition, Jake, who is the only paid member on staff at the center, coordinates the Sexual Assault Center’s volunteers, helps with youth outreach and education programs, and develops fundraisers so that the center can continue its work.

The job is a big one, and at times, says Jake, it can be intense. Currently, the center has 15 cases open, and at our interview, Jake showed me the cell phone that he keeps on him 24/7 so that he can instantly respond to calls on the center’s sexual assault hotline.

“To some extent you can only do so much,” he says. “One of the hardest things with the position I have is establishing a habit of not taking work home with me. Especially because sometimes victims will go back to live with their offenders, because the offender might live in the same house.”

What keeps him going is the courage of the clients who have come forward to him at the center.

“With them in mind, it’s easy to do what I do, day in and day out,” he says.

Initially, says Jake, there was some concern that his gender would potentially impact victims’ willingness to work with him in the wake of an assault. But Jake’s supervisor, Anna Olson, who works out of Family Services’ headquarters in Brown County, says that his gender has actually worked out to be a boon for the program.

“It’s great when we have male victims to have a male advocate available,” she says, “We’ve never had that option before.”

Jake says that Anna and everyone else in the Brown County office provide him with support so that he can do his job effectively and lean on someone if he needs to talk. He also shares some of his burdens and his successes with Claire.

“He comes home and that’s the first thing he wants to talk about,” she says. “He really feels like he’s making a difference.”

Now that Jake is settled in to both his new job and his new life with Claire, he plans to slow down just a little bit, and continue to face life’s challenges as they come along.

“My life motto is I take it one day at a time, with my job, with my marriage,” he says. “I don’t get too worried about things.”