Alda Buresh

[ Advocate ] [ Fighter ] [ Survivor ]

Her job doesn’t always make her a very popular person.

As a client advocacy services provider at the Domestic Violence Intervention Program,

Alda Buresh said many people think the victims she works with can do something about their situations without outside help.

But Buresh said that’s not the case.

“It’s a war fought on the home front,” she said. “And the people you’re supposed to rely on and trust are the people who are hurting you.”

Buresh first became involved with DVIP 11 years ago. While she hasn’t been a victim of domestic violence, she said she feels victims’ pain. Buresh and her co-workers help nearly 2,000 domestic violence victims and their families in Johnson, Cedar, Iowa and Washington counties.

“I don’t know what they’re going through, they’re going through so much more (than I did), but I understand their fear,” she said.

Buresh was born in Latvia at the height of World War II. She remembers bombs going off near her home at night and the sounds of air raid sirens and low-flying planes. It’s a memory that she said allows her to empathize with victims suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.

“After a span of decades, I hear low-flying planes (in my sleep) and it wakes me up and I’m scared,” she said.

When Buresh and her family escaped Latvia, they were greeted with open arms and without judgment upon arriving in the U.S. That kindness, she said, is why she works with victims of domestic violence today.

“In order to escape, we depended on the kindness of strangers,” she said. “As an adult, I realize what it means to help (people in crisis), because it does save lives.

“I decided in my second life to give back what I received from a lot of people.”

— Stephanie Wise