Women of the Year: A fight for any child in need is a more than worthy fight for Amy Knapton Vega at Vanessa Behan

If Amy Knapton Vega, the executive director of Vanessa Behan, can’t find someone to help her meet the center’s child-focused mission of providing a safe refuge for those in need, she’ll just ask for the person’s supervisor.

If that person can’t help either, she’ll just keep calling.

“This is not children-centered enough,” she’ll think to herself. Then she’ll say, “Give me the next person.”

Her perseverance put her on a first-name basis with the people at the Washington Department of Licensing, she says, largely because she’s calling so often about the center’s agreements with Child Protective Services.

“It’s my job to remind all of us that what we’re doing is about children,” said Vega, one of 2024’s Women of the Year. “And my job is a passion thing for me.”

When Vega started at Vanessa Behan at its original location on the South Hill in 1996, she was working the graveyard shift as a “house parent,” or someone who watches the children staying at the center overnight. It was quite the opposite pursuit from her attempt at a business degree, which Vega said she quickly grew to dislike and eventually turned to social work.

It led her to Vanessa Behan, where she “fell in love” with the work. She’s worked her way through the ranks since until landing her spot as executive director in 2006.

The center, founded in 1987 as a place for parents who are struggling or in crisis to temporarily bring their children, was built five years after the death of 2-year-old Vanessa Behan. Behan died six hours after a fatal blow to the abdomen on Jan. 9, 1982, according to newspaper archives. The blow ruptured her small intestine.

At first, the facility only allowed kids up to age 6 to stay for a short period. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vega and her employees sat around on a Friday night in her office trying to figure out how to move forward. Rather than cut back, Vega said, she decided to do more: Vanessa Behan opened its doors to children up to age 12. Child care skyrocketed.

“We are always focusing on what we think is the right thing, which is our children first. At first, we didn’t know how our staff was going to react. We didn’t know how to be prepared for this. We didn’t know how many people were going to call us on Monday for this thing, but we figured it out,” Vega said.

It’s what has been her attitude for years.

“When a family calls with a unique situation, sometimes we don’t know. But we’ll figure it out,” Vega said. “It falls to us to become that advocate, to ask, ‘Here’s a need for a child or a family, how do we fix it? How do we fill it?’ ”

The most important thing for Vega throughout her time, she says, is forwarding the mission to protect children and help families. Vega says it’s all about assisting families who don’t want to leave their child with an abusive family member while they’re at work, or sometimes it’s about helping families who can’t afford daycare or diapers. Sometimes it’s also about helping mothers who might just need a break during a serious bout of postpartum depression.

For Vega, nothing is out of the question if it involves a child who needs help. But she isn’t the only person who sees herself working to embody that standard.

“When she says we make our decisions on what’s best for the child, she means it and she does it,” said Lacy Renner, the development director at Vanessa Behan. “You can see her passion. If it’s for the interest of the children, she gets it done. She is an inspiration to do the right thing all the time.”

Renner calls her job “the best job I ever had.”

And it’s mostly due to Vega, Renner said, because she is “in the trenches” with the rest of the staff. She isn’t someone who oversees her employees, but rather walks alongside them. Nothing is too big for her, Renner said, and no job is “below” her, because Vega will always figure out what to do, won’t give up without a fight and will wade through any water, literally, for her employees.

Renner recalled a time where the facility flooded, and Vega was downstairs, in her dress shoes, walking through dirty water and holding some type of drill or screwdriver to fix what she could to prevent more flood damage.

“She will do anything. Nothing fazes her,” Renner said. “And she will take on what scares her.”

Christina Thomas, a volunteer at Vanessa Behan, said she’s watched many families come and go in the center, and Vega will always greet them with warmth.

“She has true grace, gives people the benefit of the doubt and works from her heart. You can see it the minute you meet her,” Thomas said. “Her warmth emanates. And if there is a child in the reception area that draws her in, that is right where she goes. She connects.”

Thomas recalled how Vega began working with the Spokane County Jail to take over a space, now dubbed “The Children’s Waiting Room,” where anyone going to court or doing business there can drop their kids off in order to protect them from potentially traumatizing discussions.

It was another one of Vega’s accomplishments, Thomas said.

“She said yes because she wanted to help out, because it was a good thing,” she added. “That’s who she is.”

Because Vega’s job is a passion, she doesn’t burn out easily, she said. If she does, only temporarily, it’s a lesson about not giving up.

“One bad day is not defining. And there will be another one. But you just try again the next day, right?” she said.

Alongside passion, Vega relies heavily on empathy, she said. When she passes by a homeless person, her thoughts aren’t negative. They’re something like, “Did they get the care they needed as a child? How can we try to prevent this?” she says. “How did we get here and how can we do better?”

It’s easy to judge, Vega believes, but preventing these situations begins by believing that all people are human.

“We create stories based on our own backgrounds of why somebody’s behaving the way they’re behaving. That may not be the real story,” Vega said.

So when a child comes into Vanessa Behan, Vega’s first thought is how she and the staff will do anything in their power to help. If they run out of diapers, she is calling Rosauers to see if the store will donate more. If a child doesn’t have underwear, she will go out and buy a four-pack herself. If Child Protective Services needs an extra day to keep a child in Vanessa Behan for their own protection, Vega responds, “No problem.”

In a room on the top floor of Vanessa Behan sits a whiteboard. There, scrawled in colorful Expo marker, is a thank -you note from those involved with the agency, addressed to Vega.

“I had no idea my job would be this incredible, and I pinch myself,” Renner said about Vega on Tuesday. “It’s her. She would never take credit for it, but she is a special, special person.”