Grand Forks County Sheriff Andy Schneider honored at CVIC's 20th-annual memorial breakfast
May 7—EDITOR'S NOTE — If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, visit CVIC's website at https://www.cviconline.org/ or call the 24-hour crisis line at (701) 746-8900.
GRAND FORKS — Fundraising is one goal of CVIC's annual Judd Sondreal Memorial Rise & Shine for Peace Breakfast, but this year's Jim Vigness Peacemaker Award recipient — Grand Forks County Sheriff Andy Schneider — emphasized the importance of contributing to the nonprofit's mission in other ways.
"Everybody can be a peacemaker," Schneider said. "If you can impact just one person's life — maybe it's through a conversation with them — then you've definitely made a difference."
Schneider was selected as this year's awardee because of the work he does to address violence as a law enforcement official, as well as advocating for funding in the Legislature, according to CVIC Board Chair Catherine Gillach.
Approximately 800 people attended the 20th-annual memorial breakfast, which took place Wednesday morning, May 7, at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks. Guests included local lawmakers, current and retired law enforcement, violence survivors and advocates. The organization's fundraising goal was to collect $450,000 worth of pledges, which are made by monthly donations throughout a five-year period.
The keynote speaker, Amanda Hendrickson — a violence survivor and CVIC donor — spoke about experiencing sexual violence from a very young age, and spending years in denial of what she had endured.
"I spent over 25 years dealing with the secret pain that I couldn't understand — afraid of a memory," Hendrickson said. "I tried to stuff it away and pretend it was a dream. I tried to be good enough to be worthy of love."
Fourteen years ago, attending a CVIC memorial breakfast for the first time, her heart broke when she learned just how many people were like her. On the other hand, realizing how many others had faced their traumatic pasts helped Hendrickson feel ready to address her own, she said.
"It took until my late 30s to finally realize that I was a victim of someone else's choices," Hendrickson said. "As I look around the room today, I wonder if there are any of you out here like me, lost in a painful past, afraid of a memory. ... Today, I hope to give you the courage to embark on your own healing journey and see what is waiting for you on the other side. Let this be a new beginning for you. You are not alone."
CVIC is here, she said, no matter who someone is or how long it has been since they were victimized.
Considering this year's theme, "Champions for Change," speakers spoke about people in their lives who embodied that title, including CVIC CEO and President Coiya Tompkins Inman who, for the first time, shared the story of herself, her younger brother and her mother fleeing from her abusive stepfather and seeking help from an organization similar to CVIC.
"I think a lot about how hard that must have been for (my mother), how scared she must have been, how long that 10-minute drive must have felt and how truly courageous she was to ask a stranger for help," Tompkins Inman said. "Most of all, I think about (my brother) Matt and I, and how fortunate we were that she took that first step."
She and her brother are both now parents, and it's a powerful thing to consider the impact her mother has had on her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Tompkins Inman said.
She thinks of her former stepfather, now deceased, who repeated the abusive patterns of his own father and, after separating from Tompkins Inman's mother, repeated the cycle with other people in his life.
"Without proper intervention, these devastating patterns compound for families," she said. "What if he or his father would have been able to participate in (CVIC's violence intervention program) New Choices? Or, better yet, what if the rural community where they grew up would have talked about healthy relationships?"
After the event, Tompkins Inman told the Herald it has been easy to speak about her mother, brother and the people who helped them in the past.
"But the missing piece of all of this, when we talk about violence, is those folks who didn't learn how to have a healthy relationship," Tompkins Inman said.
She has slowly started learning to forgive her former stepfather, she said, in hopes of doing right by her daughter and grandchildren by approaching the issue holistically in order to truly end interpersonal violence in the community.
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