Tina Kurtz came to Du Quoin from Kewanee, Illinois — following her father south after college, settling here when she met her husband, staying when she got a job she wasn't entirely sure she'd get.

She didn't know anyone at the high school when she applied. But her husband, tired of watching her security job at Technicolor call her at 3 in the morning when computers went down, had thrown her phone into the yard and told her to apply somewhere else.

"This is gonna kill you," he said.

She interviewed with Jeff Gossett and Beard, talked about her security background and her finance work, and got hired as the in-school supervisor — the person who ran the room where students served their detention, all-day or otherwise.

What she found in that room wasn't what the job description would have suggested.

"Some of the kids that ended up with me needed someone to talk to," she says. "Things weren't going right at home, or here. They just needed someone to give them an ear."

That wasn't in the job description. She did it anyway.

"They want somebody to hear them and see them for who they are," she says. "Not for what's going on at home."

She tried not to compare them to their siblings, even though she'd now seen enough of Du Quoin families over 21 years that she easily could have. "Everybody's an individual. They all have their own gifts." She's a hugger, she admits — technically complicated in a school setting, but occasionally someone just needs that. Usually, they came to her first.

When asked what prepared her for this work, she doesn't reach for an explanation.

"I've walked in their shoes," she says. "I know what it's like."

She moved out of the ACR room eventually, into classroom paraprofessional work — algebra, Math 1, 2, and 3, sitting alongside students with IEPs, reading tests aloud, walking through problems when the anxiety of the room gets bigger than the math.

"It's more of a confidence thing," she says. "Just to have somebody there to let them know they can do it."

She's been married for 37 years. Her husband, a Tamaroa native, watched her build something here that surprised them both. He'll tell her it feels good to walk into Walmart and hear someone call out Mrs. Kurtz from across the store — and watch them come find her for a hug.

"They're all mine," Tina says. All of them, across 21 years.

Her family, by any measure, runs deep with care. Her grandmother was a nurse. Her stepmom was a nurse. Her daughter is a cath lab nurse at a hospital in Mount Vernon. Her sister-in-law is a nurse. Her niece is finishing the nursing program at Bradley University. "I come from a long list of nurses," she says, and she means it as a point of pride about more than just the profession — about a family that has consistently chosen work that requires showing up for people in hard moments.

Tina, her husband, and her daughter are all ordained ministers. Three in one household.

"If I didn't have my faith, I wouldn't have anything," she says.

She lost both sets of parents during her years here. The school absorbed some of that grief. "Through it all, this has been my family."

She's retiring this year. Her granddaughter is in first grade. Her grandson is 19 months old. They call her Nano — her granddaughter started saying it, and it stuck.

She can tell you when she knew Du Quoin was home. It wasn't a grand moment. It was the Walmart greeter, a man she believes was named Sam, one of the Waverly brothers, who called out "Welcome to Walmart, come on in, enjoy shopping" every single time she walked in.

"That just made me feel like I belonged here," she says.

Twenty-one years later, she does.