Welcome to Lost Anchorage,

Lost Anchorage, where crude investigates the mechanisms of crime and violence in Anchorage,

Alaska.

My name is Cody Liska, and I'll be your host.

Through research and interviews with professionals, law enforcement, and those affected by crime,

I hope to build a better understanding of whether or not Anchorage is in fact becoming more dangerous.

By the end of this series, I hope to create a portrait of crime in our city for better or for worse. You're going to be here. My name is Heidi Hill and I work at Awake, stands for abused women's aid in crisis and it's Anchorage's emergency domestic violence shelter.

I am their grants and program director currently and I've been there since 2005 in many different roles. I started out as a children's advocate and I've been a case manager in the shelter and non-residential programs and shelter manager as well.

Can you explain what awake is and what it does?

Absolutely.

So it's our emergency domestic violence shelter here in Anchorage.

It is the only one in Anchorage.

We have a capacity of 52 beds and that is for, as you know, a city of nearly 300,000 people.

So we have a lot of people needing help at the shelter.

We have a lot of wraparound services as well, case management programs, transitional housing, legal advocacy, substance use case management as well.

So is the program director at Wake, what does your daily routine look like?

Wow, that's kind of hard to pin down.

I oversee three managers, two in the shelter and one programs managers, So they supervise all the advocates and

case managers and that work directly with victims of domestic violence. And so I

supervise them. We do a lot of check-ins about things that are going on, but I'm also responsible for all of our grants.

So reporting, applications, seeking out new funding sources.

So it's a very varied work day, generally. And grants that's extremely important in non-profits. Yes.

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