read from the work at Ohio Poetry Day, held in Troy, Ohio, in November. Winner of the Pushcart Prize and a founding editor of the New York City imprint Four Way Books, Dzvinia is a member of the poetry faculty at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program in creative writing at Pine Manor College and a poetry lecturer at Providence College. 1979 Frank Bajak won the 2014 Maria Moors Cabot Award, presented by Columbia University for distinguished reporting from Latin America. Frank has been Andean news chief for the Associated Press since 2006 and was recently named to the AP’s international investigative reporting team. He lives in Lima, Peru, with his wife, Cecilia Malachowski, with whom he has three grown children who live in America. 1980s 1982 Andrea Siegel has written a new book called Splash: The Careful Parent’s Guide to Teaching Swimming, which focuses on teaching children who fear swimming or water, but is Top: Bajak ‘79; above left: Hoffman ‘75; Gardner ‘85 useful for teaching swimmers of all levels. “Ten people die of drowning in the U.S. every day, in every season,” Andrea writes. “It would be a wonderful thing if we could prevent some children from drowning this year.” 1983 Peter Staley writes: “I was appointed to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Ending the Epidemic Task Force, which will outline a plan to dramatically lower HIV infections in New York state by 2020.” 1985 Tom Gardner and his wife, Alina Vogelhut Gardner, welcomed a baby, Runia Leah Gardner, on September 10, 2014. Runia was born at home on a sunny day and, according to her father, “arrived with a beautiful soul.” 1986 Michele Brogunier, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, spoke in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Carbon proposal in November 2014 at an event covered by Wisconsin Public Radio and local television. n Annette Dubois launched a freelance writing business—Luminaria Science Writing—in September 2014 and looks forward to collaborating with other Obies in medical and scientific research. “When not writing, I’m seriously pursuing photography (check out my Flickr page!), social activism, and trying to attend every cultural event in Geneva,” she writes. [w] luminaria.ch JUDGING AMY When Minneapolis attorney Amy Dawson ’89 discov- ered that her 3-year-old son was autistic, she learned of a promising treatment approach called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy. ABA is an evidence-based treatment that uses contracting and positive reinforcement to teach children new skills. It was expensive, but it was working for her son. “It really is important to understand that he went from being nonverbal, hav- ing very few words that even I could understand, and having an IQ below 50 to being a kid who you would not observe in a classroom of kids and pick out as a kid with autism,” she says. “In fact the Autism Spectrum Disorders Clinic at the University of Minnesota evaluated him a couple years ago and said he no longer meets the diagnostic criteria, except by history.“ But getting there wasn’t easy. One of the biggest challenges of her son’s condition was figuring out how to pay for the therapy, which at times cost $8,000 to $10,000 per month. She had to take Minnesota’s Medical Assistance pro- gram to court to cover the cost. “It turned out that be- ing a litigator was just what my son needed, because I basically had to get in- volved in a bunch of differ- ent lawsuits and threaten lawsuits,” she says. She realized she wasn’t alone. Many families had no idea this largely effec- tive treatment existed, let alone that their insurance should cover it. And so in 2009 she founded the Autism Advocacy and Law Center. “One of the conundrums about paying for autism care is that the lifetime cost of a kid who has autism is $3.2 million, according to a Harvard study,” Dawson says. “We can reduce that tremen- dously. Take my son, who’s had ABA therapy for five years: For the cost of that therapy, we now have a kid who has every likelihood as any other kid, every other chance of success, growing up to be independent and successful. So instead of costing society $3.2 million, he will grow up to be inde- pendent, to be a taxpayer. We can save a lot of money for society by paying for that treatment.” Last year, Dawson decided to run for judge in the Fourth Judicial District of Hennepin County, and in November she won. She hopes to educate other judges about the issues surrounding families with special needs children. Before her advocacy work, Dawson did construc- tion law at a large firm. She thought she was good at it and liked how much she was learning, but she later realized something had been missing. “Until I shifted the focus of my work to helping children and individuals and families affected by autism and other disabili- ties, I didn’t find being an attorney really satisfying. I never found that passion and satisfaction at work. But now I do, and since changing my focus to helping children, individuals, and families affected by autism, I love being an at- torney. And I’m pretty sure I will love being a judge, too.” —Rosalind Black ’14 and Jeff Hagan ’86 OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2015 / SPRING 33