The Kern County Sheriff’s and District Attorney’s offices were supportive, but the BPD questioned the women’s motives. Some in the community, including on local talk radio, called Snyder and her friends radical and hysterical.
Time and state laws would later move the hotline out of Wilson’s kitchen.
The state started requiring county hospitals that received its funds to provide sexual assault and domestic violence services. The then-CEO of Kern Medical Center turned a linen closet into a tiny office for the women and gave them a pager that beeped as calls came in or when a victim turned up at the hospital.
The hotline became a 24/7 operation. It was later expanded to San Joaquin Community Hospital (now Adventist Health Bakersfield) and Mercy Hospital.
Snyder was volunteer coordinator and executive director for the Rape Hotline of Kern County from September 1974 to January 1982, the first six years with no pay. She and friend Stephanie Thiessen developed and coordinated protocols for local emergency rooms; co-wrote grants for state funding; trained and supervised volunteers and staff; and represented the hotline in the media and at speaking engagements.
“I learned that my passion stems from stepping up for people who don’t have an advocate,” Snyder said.
In the late 1970s, Snyder and Thiessen had given advice and contacts to two local social workers who wanted to establish services for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Those social workers went on to establish the Alliance Against Family Violence and Sexual Assault, and over time its services replaced the hotline Snyder had helped establish.
Snyder was recently at the Alliance’s offices and thanked its current staffers for carrying on the work she and her friends started all those years ago.
“‘I told them, ‘Bless you for everything you have done,’” Snyder said. “’We were tired.’”
HER PAYING JOBS
While running the hotline, Snyder was also growing a career and raising a family.
She had earned a medical assisting certificate from Bakersfield College, and from 1981 to 1991 worked as a certified medical assistant for a local neonatologist. It was a great training ground for the rest of her career in health care; she performed a wide variety of administrative and clinical duties.
In the late 1980s Snyder knew she needed to go back to school if she wanted to move up into management, and in 1992 earned a bachelor’s degree in public administration from CSUB. She walked the stage six weeks before turning 40, proud of accomplishing something she’d always intended to.
“I was that 16 year-old-who had goals,” Snyder said. “She never left me.”
Next came work as a medical office manager for a local cardiologist.
Snyder grew concerned for patient care when she saw doctor’s offices hiring unqualified people to be medical assistants and then training them in-house. So as a member of the Golden Empire Chapter of Medical Assistants and California Society of Medical Assistants, she lobbied state legislators to define what medical assistants could do.
A couple times a year, she’d also fly across the country to help write questions for the national medical assistants exam.
When in the mid-1990s she “hit a wall” and didn’t want to do office work anymore, Snyder became a sales rep manager for Bakersfield Envelope and Printing Co. Health care would eventually call her back into service full-time, though.
CARING FOR THE ELDERLY
Snyder became interested in geriatric care after experiencing the heartache of caring for a father and mother-in-law in decline. From January 1998 to late 2003 she worked for Continuum Care Management, assessing and recommending services for dementia patients and their families.
For many years after that, Snyder continued the work as an independent contractor. During that period she earned her second CSUB degree, a master’s in health care administration.
In 2014, Snyder took over day-to-day operations at Interim HealthCare in Bakersfield, which provides assisted care, placement and staffing services to elderly and medically fragile clients. Owner/Director Darlyn Baker recruited Snyder, whom she described as a “chameleon” who helps “whenever, however and wherever” she’s needed.
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