Teacher was known for devotion to faith, family and students

Tacoma teacher Jennifer Ann Paulson was devoted to her family, devoted to her students, devoted to her Christian faith.

She was caring, compassionate and selfless, friends and family members said Friday.

She tutored at-risk kids and spent some of her summers volunteering for a mission to help inner-city youths. She was the kind of person who would carry a bug outside to set it free.

And she prayed for her stalker, even as she took steps that led to his brief jailing last week for violating an anti-harassment order.

The man, 30-year-old Jed Ryan Waits, shot and killed Paulson about 7:30 a.m. Friday as she arrived at Birney Elementary School to teach the special education students she so loved, police said.

Paulson, 30, died at the scene.

Waits fled and was shot and killed by a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy about 20 minutes later as he brandished a gun outside a day care center in Frederickson.

Though Paulson was scared and intimidated by the acquaintance who obsessively shadowed her for years, her thoughts were foremost on her students this week.

“When I talked to her Wednesday night, I could tell her heart was heavy,” said her mom, Nancy Heisler. “She saw a note from one of her students who said she wanted to kill herself. … Her heart would break if she knew something sad about a student.”

Paulson, ever the compassionate teacher, confided in her mother that she was worrying about how best to help the child, whose name she kept to herself.

On Friday afternoon, just hours after Paulson was slain, Heisler spoke about her daughter’s attitude toward the man who took her life and then was shot by police: “One thing I know my daughter would want brought to attention is that there is another grieving family here.”

In every way, many who knew her said, Paulson radiated her faith and her desire to help kids.

The Rev. Dean Curry, pastor of Life Center of Tacoma, saw it shining through her dedication to teaching. She taught special education students at Birney all week, then volunteered to help at-risk kids through a church program on Saturdays.

Former Tacoman Rachel May remembers when Paulson began tutoring her daughter, now 10, as a second-grader.

“She really did something life-changing for my daughter and our family,” May said. “She was an excellent teacher and an excellent person too. There was something special about her relationship with kids.”

When Paulson volunteered for the faith-based ministry Urban Promise in Wilmington, Del., in 2003 and 2004, she told her family the group was so poor its members did the dishes in the bathtub for a time, said her father, Ken Paulson.

Family members thought that was gross.

“But she didn’t care, because they were helping kids,” Ken Paulson said.

COMMUNITY TIES

The Paulson family has deep roots in the city and its business community.

Ken Paulson is a longtime community activist who ran for the Pierce County Council in 2008 and was an applicant for vacant Tacoma City Council positions last year.

Jennifer Paulson was a pioneering member of the inaugural high school class at Life Christian Academy in Tacoma, graduating in 1998 with honors, headmaster Ross Hjelseth said.

He described her as an exemplary student, “one of the people we built our high school program on.”

She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Seattle Pacific University in 2003, majoring in special education and minoring in global and urban ministries and sociology.

She chose a career in special education in part because her youngest brother, Jason, struggled in school, family members said. Now, aided by his sister’s mentoring and support, he’s a successful college student.

She began teaching in the Tacoma School District as a substitute in 2004, then was hired full-time at Stanley Elementary School in 2005. She taught at Hunt Middle School in 2006 and moved in 2007 to Birney Elementary, where she worked with struggling readers.

“She was a good teacher,” fourth-grader D’Ante Jackson said, after riding up to the school on his bike to survey the police activity Friday. “She always helped us read if we didn’t know how to read it.”

She also helped students work on projects after lunch. Most recently, D’Ante said, she helped him make valentines.

‘A STAR’

Jennifer Paulson was a student too.

She earned a master’s degree in education in June at the University of Washington Tacoma. The day before she died, she completed paperwork for state certification that was the next step in her career.

“She was a star,” said Marcy Stein, a professor of education at UWT. “She was a great student, very conscientious. She was what we want from our teachers. The kind of teacher who wants to continually learn and get better.”

Even before she began her master’s work, she was involved with the UWT, volunteering for coaching through a pilot program at the university.

“She said, ‘I’d like to learn more,’” Stein said.

Jennifer Paulson also possessed an inexhaustible supply of energy when things involving kids or learning needed to be done, Ken Paulson said.

When a UWT professor recommended her to a Seattle family as a tutor for their child, Jennifer Paulson agreed to meet them in Tukwila for lessons, working for months to help the struggling student.

She insisted on meeting the family halfway, her father said.

“I joked that they didn’t pay her enough to drive to Tukwila,” he said.

It was typical of her selflessness.

She dealt with years of harassment from Waits by turning the other cheek.

“She was being bothered by this man, but she was still praying for him,” Pastor Curry said.

Jennifer Paulson’s mother had one special word to describe her daughter: “She was an angel.”

“She loved everybody. She never had a bad word about anybody, not even this guy who killed her. … My daughter loved the Lord. She was a strong Christian, and she loved the Lord.

“And that’s how she lived her life.”

Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659

kris.sherman@thenewstribune.com

Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635

debbie.cafazzo@thenewstribune.com