By Michelle Nery

Attorney by day, nurse by night – and mother, wife and daughter in between – Kim Crump ’02 has been successfully holding down two jobs for more than a year now, but she’s not doing it for the money. She simply wants to help make the world a better place. And case by case, patient by patient, she’s making an impact.

After nearly seven years of defending drug dealers and prostitutes, Crump decided she wanted to do something to help them end their self-destructive behavior and repair their families. She wanted to reach the children, especially, to prevent them from ever becoming one of her clients.

Crump, who already had earned both a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a law degree, thought she could learn some things in nursing that would apply to her law practice, so she enrolled in the weekend nursing program at ODU in 2000. Many of her clients were coping with complicated issues that lay deep beneath their custody battles and restraining orders. “A lot of women I have met ... have been victims of domestic and sexual abuse, and that results in self-destructive behavior,” said Crump.

In addition to working three nights a week as an emergency room nurse at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Crump serves on the board of the Norfolk Drug Court, where she hopes to develop programs to help people deal early on with their problems.

“The children certainly are my heart. You can’t remake families,” she said. In a recent case involving a custody dispute, a child with Attention Deficit Disorder and a restraining order against the husband, Crump recommended counseling and anger-management classes, like any attorney would, but with her psychology and, now, nursing background, she could see the situation from a new perspective. “I could take some of my knowledge and help them come to some resolution as a family.”

Crump hopes to give every child she encounters the chance at a safe and loving childhood, like the one she has created for her own 6-year-old daughter, Mary. Through the support of her mother and husband, creative scheduling and thoughtful planning, Crump is able to spend quality time with her daughter most evenings and mornings.

“Some days I work 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. at the hospital and others I work 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., so I feel like I’m with her more than most people who have 9 to 5 jobs.” Crump scaled back her law practice when Mary was born and set up a home office so she could be there more often, but still maintains an office in Norfolk where she can meet with clients.

Crump may be tired, but she shows no signs of slowing down. Subscribing to Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs, she said her hope is to reach the final stage, self-actualization, where one is able to do what she was born to do. The theory also helps her to believe in this possibility within each of her troubled clients. As the theory holds, all humans strive for the upper level of capabilities, but can only achieve this ideal after satisfying their own basic physiological needs, followed by the needs of safety and security, love and belonging, and self-esteem.

If Kim Crump hasn’t yet reached Maslow’s self-actualization stage, she can’t be far from it.