LUKE AWTRY
Tracy Dolan
Rescue Lines Public health expert Tracy Dolan readies Vermont for Afghan arrivals B Y K E N PI CA RD • ken@sevendaysvt.com
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racy Dolan was traveling one night on a remote road in northeastern Afghanistan when local warlords stopped the car she was riding in. It was 2002, just a few months after the fall of the Taliban, and Dolan was working for the nonprofit ChildFund International to set up schools for Afghan children, most of whom had never had formal education. The kidnapping of Westerners was not yet common, but travel in isolated areas was always perilous because of land mines and heavily armed militants. “It’s funny. When you’re young, you don’t think much about security,” said 30
Dolan, who was 32 at the time but had already lived and worked in several conflict-ridden countries in Asia and subSaharan Africa. Dolan didn’t speak Dari or Pashto, Afghanistan’s most common languages, but from the tone and demeanor of the militants, who carried Kalashnikov rifles, she knew they meant business. Dolan’s Afghan guides answered their questions calmly and quickly, and soon the gunmen let the group continue. Later, one of the interpreters told Dolan he’d spun a yarn about how they were all working for the United Nations so that the warlords wouldn’t harass them further. It
SEVEN DAYS OCTOBER 27-NOVEMBER 3, 2021
was one of several occasions, Dolan said, when her Afghan partners had risked their own lives to save hers. Nearly two decades later, Dolan is looking forward to repaying such courage by helping compatriots of the Afghans who protected her. In September, Gov. Phil Scott appointed her director of the Vermont State Refugee Office. Her first order of business will be to coordinate state and federal assistance to as many as 100 Afghan refugees approved for resettlement in the Green Mountains. All were displaced by the rapid fall of Afghanistan’s government in August, including many who worked with the U.S. military during the 20-year war.
“The idea that I might play any small role at all in making Vermont more welcoming feels great,” Dolan remarked during an interview soon after starting her new job. Vermonters may recognize Dolan from her most recent position as deputy commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health, where she was often the face and voice of public health during the COVID19 pandemic. But the 51-year-old Jericho woman, who grew up in a working-class family in northern British Columbia, also brings to her new job more than a decade of international experience helping people in dire circumstances. Widely praised for