Christy Lister

By ALLISON SELK

Shaw Media correspondent

Since mid-2019, Christy Lister has worked to prevent other police officers’ families from experiencing the pain of losing someone.

Her ex-husband, Downers Grove police officer Ken Lister, took his own life that year.

“Families are serving next to the officer. Officers have a family life and a police family and they try to keep those lives separate, and communication stops,” Lister said. “We can’t make change if we don’t talk about it.”

She found Blue HELP, a national nonprofit that began in 2017 with a goal to collect law enforcement suicide data, the first in the nation, and to honor those who died by suicide.

Blue HELP co-founder Karen Solomon said Lister submitted her ex-husband’s information on the website and then got more involved. As the infrastructure grew, Lister became a local Blue HELP Illinois state representative to assist families and educate police departments in her own state.

“Blue HELP was growing fast,” Lister said. “They needed people in each state talking to departments, officers and families, they need to know someone in the state understands the environment.”

Lister visits departments to remind leadership that officers may have personal issues and that, at times, it can be viewed as weak to ask for help with mental health. She said issues can become amplified with stress at work and the way officers process or choose not to process the stress. She recalled that Ken stopped engaging emotionally and physically.

She has begun to work with new hires in the departments. Lister said most officers tend to begin to shut down emotionally around the five-year mark, so if she can talk to the new officers about how to make things different, it may help in the long run.

“Ken is why I’m here, I’m the family, this happened to us,” Lister said. “The most courageous thing to do is ask for help.”

Lister has a goal to help the officers, educate leadership and work with families because the job encompasses the whole family, not just the officers themselves. Lister said she internalized Ken’s stress and blamed herself for her husband’s withdrawn behavior.

According to Solomon, Lister has become an asset as a Blue HELP state representative because she understands state laws and wants to create better ones in Illinois for first responders; she’s familiar with local cultures; she can identify issues unique to Illinois; she is able to get information faster and in turn help families in a timely way because she has a finger on the pulse of the state; and she can reach out to more departments.

“She’s unbelievably responsible, charismatic, independent, creative and not shy — she’s not afraid to get out there and reach out in a caring and compassionate way,” Solomon said.

Lister also co-founded a group called The Harvesting Hope Project, which offers a safe space for first responders and families to open up about struggles and heal together. Families and active or retired first responders have a sounding board, a place to not feel alone.

She sits on the committee for the Council for Working Women through the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry and is also a part of the Three Rivers Association of Realtors.

Lister said she feels her community strengthens when people give back, as she was shown by her grandmother and mother as a child.