Jack Reed, U.S. senator

The U.S. Senate is a small town where people size each other up pretty quickly. Long before it was clear that he would be the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama sized up Jack Reed as a source of sound advice on defense and foreign affairs.

Long before it was clear that the obscure field of securitized mortgages would be the scene of an epic financial crash, the denizens of that exotic world sized him up as a lawmaker who could speak their language.

So it was in 2008 that events conspired to make clear in the national arena what Rhode Islanders have known for a long time: Jack Reed knows how lots of things work. Many senators, to be sure, can ply a range of weighty issues. What distinguishes Reed from many colleagues is the detail and subtlety of his views.

No surprise, then, that Obama looked to Reed as a traveling guide when he made a high-profile trip to Iraq and Afghanistan last summer. Reed had opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and he misread the potential of President Bush’s troop surge four years later. But the West Point graduate was among a bare handful of Democrats who almost always deferred to military leadership in their opposition to deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals — even last summer, when it meant disagreeing with Obama. Reed was also among the first to report that the surge was succeeding militarily.

On the domestic front, Reed showed during last year’s emergencies that he’s the kind of legislative mechanic who knows where to find the right tool for a tricky job. Late in the spring, he came up with the financing mechanism that won the Republican support needed for the first installment of the housing bailout. Not incidentally, this fee on mortgage transactions will convert into a permanent rental housing subsidy for poor people — something liberals have sought in vain for years.

Reed turned aside all talk last year that he should be considered for high office in the Obama administration, arguing that he would serve better as a senior senator from Rhode Island. Reed has committee assignments that give him a prominent platform on key issues at home and abroad. That will keep Reed in high demand as the new president goes to work with a new, Democratic-ruled Congress to redeem his campaign pledge to fix things on both fronts.

—John E. Mulligan

Matthew Jerzyk, political blogger

Eight years ago, Matthew Jerzyk stood on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., protesting the inauguration of George W. Bush.

Next month, Jerzyk will return to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama. He still has a Providence Journal story about the 2001 protest that he plans to frame along with his tickets to the Obama inaugural and his press pass as Rhode Island’s blogger to last summer’s Democratic National Convention in Denver.

“I was so angry eight years ago,” recalls Jerzyk. “So I worked my tail off, as a community organizer and as a blogger, to help change our president. Now, we’ve finally done it. For me, it’s redemption.”

Jerzyk’s Rhode Island Future ( www.rifuture.org), a political blog aimed at the state’s progressive community, draws 25,000 unique visitors a month, serving up a cornucopia of local political information and scoops like Governor Carcieri’s failure to pay property taxes on a condo he owns in Florida. (The governor subsequently called it an oversight and paid the taxes.)

Jerzyk created the blog in 2005, hoping to bring to the masses the political culture he discovered as a lobbyist at the State House — dishing up the kind of inside dope that pols and lobbyists don’t usually say on the record to reporters from the “MSM,” bloggerspeak for mainstream media.

Readership soared, fueled by intense interest in Sheldon Whitehouse’s victorious 2006 campaign over Lincoln Chafee for U.S. senator. Jerzyk was an early Obama supporter, and received media credentials as Rhode Island’s blogger to the Democratic Convention. Rhode Island Future became a clearinghouse for news of the Obama campaign, linking local volunteers who made calls and visits to swing states.

“His site is followed closely by party people,” said state Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch. “Anything that gets people talking, energizes them and draws them to the process is a good thing.”

Next week, Jerzyk transfers Rhode Island Future to a regular contributor, Patrick Crowley, assistant executive director of National Education Association Rhode Island. Jerzyk, 31, recently became a lawyer, and is focused on his young family — wife Suzanne Da Silva, a Cranston teacher, and sons Diego, 3, and Colin, 10 months. But he vows to remain a contributor to Rhode Island Future.

—Mike Stanton

Jose Genao, civil-rights advocate

American citizen Jose Genao turned his unpleasant experience at a Providence heating equipment supply store into a lesson on civil rights and a caution against racial discrimination.

The incident occurred March 1 when Genao went to the former Rhode Island Refrigeration on Branch Avenue to buy a spare part for his boiler.

Genao, a Rhode Island state worker, and his friend spoke Spanish to one another as the store’s owner, David Richardson, searched the shelves for the part.

Richardson demanded to see their Social Security cards. When Genao told Richardson he did not have the right to ask such questions, Richardson displayed a membership card for Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, a group that seeks curbs on illegal immigration. He also threatened to make a citizen’s arrest.

Richardson later said his action was a civic duty and told a reporter he had “no problem as a citizen of the United States of America to try and pursue people who are breaking laws.”

The case drew national attention and spurred a “Stop the Hate Speech” effort in Rhode Island.

Richardson apologized in September after the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights and the Providence Human Relations Commission found probable cause that he had discriminated against Genao. Richardson also donated $500 to five charities of Genao’s choosing.

Genao said he was pleased that Richardson acknowledged “that what he did was wrong, and [so is] anyone out there who is trying to use the same method as he did … by trying to intimidate people.”

—Karen Lee Ziner

Elizabeth Beisel, Olympian

It’s not often the accomplishments of a 15-year-old constitute one of a year’s most significant achievements, but in August, North Kingstown’s Elizabeth Beisel was still a week shy of her 16th birthday when she put Rhode Island in the world spotlight with her performance at the Beijing Olympics.

Michael Phelps’ quest to win eight gold medals made swimming the most watched sport at the Olympics, and, as the youngest member of the U.S. Swimming Team, Beisel became a favorite of the world media that was spending a lot of time at the Water Cube.

On the same morning Phelps won his first gold medal, the nation watched as Beisel posted the fastest time in the five qualifying heats of the women’s 400-meter individual medley. A few days later, all the cameras were fixed on Beisel as she won her semifinal heat of the 200-meter backstroke. Eventually she narrowly missed medaling in both events, finishing fourth in the individual medley and fifth in the backstroke.

What made her Olympic journey so exciting for Ocean State residents is that she’s a true Rhode Islander.

She was born and raised in North Kingstown. She first fell in love with the water at the beach down the street from her Saunderstown home and started swimming in a youth program at the University of Rhode Island.

Right from the start, she was a natural, an aquatic prodigy of sorts. She set her first national age-group record when she was 10 and continued setting new national marks as she progressed through the U.S. Swimming Association’s various age groups. She trains year-round with the USS Attleboro Bluefish swim club.

In the spring of 2007, when she was 14, she earned a spot on the U.S. team for the World Swim Championships in Australia and finished 12th in the 200-meter backstroke against the best female swimmers in the world. That summer, she won four titles at the U.S. National Junior Championships.

She had become a U.S. Olympic hopeful, but most people were thinking of her as a 2012 Olympian, not this year. Yet this past June, only a few weeks after finishing her sophomore year at North Kingstown High School, she surprised the swimming world by earning two spots on the U.S. Olympic team.

Only three weeks after she returned from Beijing, Beisel had resumed her world-class training schedule, and a few weeks ago, when the high school swimming season began, she also was with her North Kingstown High swim teammates.

“I had so much support over the summer while I was in China. It was a good time, but it’s great to be back,” says Beisel.

—John Gillooly

Steve Grasso, financial planner

It is easy, now in winter, to forget the financial storms of the fall.

But it was not long ago that stock prices plunged on an almost daily basis, the nation’s credit markets seized up, and some of the best-known names on Wall Street collapsed.

Amid the maelstrom, there was Steve Grasso, dispensing advice not only to his clients, but to the general public, too.

Grasso, 48, of Cranston, is an investment adviser with the Edward Jones brokerage branch on Park Avenue in Cranston.

In that role, he had to field questions from anxious clients about the impact of market troubles on their portfolios.

But in addition, in his role as chairman of the Rhode Island chapter of the Financial Planning Association, a trade group for financial planners and others, Grasso regularly advised the public to take a calm and rational approach to investing and other money matters, despite the turbulence that some experts were calling the worst since the Great Depression.

Robert E. Veasey Jr., a former chairman of Rhode Island’s Financial Planning Association, said of Grasso, “He was very consistent in his suggestions — that panic was not profitable, and to have a longer view.”

The guidance that Grasso dispensed through interviews in the newspaper and on radio was essentially the same he gave to clients who called or dropped by his office: “Calm down. We don’t want to make irrational decisions.”

Better, he said, to “make sure we’re focused on our time horizons, what it is we’re trying to achieve.”

Veasey, who runs Veasey Financial Advisors, an investment advisory firm in Providence, said that Grasso’s primary focus during the height of the market’s turmoil “was to calm them down … and try to reassure them that this, too, will pass.”

And it will — though it will take time, Grasso said.

—Neil Downing

Frank J. Williams, chief justice

The year ended with a bang for the state’s judiciary with the stunning announcement that Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams would step down at the month’s end.

In declaring his intention to retire, Williams, 68, said he had achieved many of his goals during his almost eight-year tenure and wanted to get out before the next legislative session. The chief justice also cited his elderly mother’s health and weariness with administrative duties as factors.

Williams earned a firebrand reputation for his tireless advocacy of the courts and, at times, confrontational style. He helped arrange the construction of two new courthouses and wrested greater control of the judiciary’s budget, occasionally placing him at odds with both Governor Carcieri and the General Assembly.

Nominated by former Gov. Lincoln Almond in January 2001, Williams was involved in a number of high-profile rulings. One of the most controversial came in July, when the court overturned a Superior Court jury verdict ordering paint companies to pay billions to clean up the lead-based paints that the state claimed poisoned thousands of Rhode Island children.

And in the first test of same-sex marriages in the state, Williams joined a 3-2 majority that said state law did not give the Family Court jurisdiction to grant divorces to same-sex couples married in other states.

The court also weighed in on the power play between Carcieri and the Democratic legislative leadership, most recently finding the governor had the right to control the state Coastal Resources Management Council membership.

In an effort to make the courts more accessible, Williams resurrected the tradition of taking the high court on the road, as seen in the days before cars. He also supported the justices putting their names on a greater number of decisions, rather than issuing anonymous rulings.

—Katie Mulvaney

Dean M. Esserman, Providence police chief

In Dean M. Esserman, Providence residents have not just a police chief but a figure in national — and even international — law enforcement.

He is a member of the U.S. Justice Department transition team for President-elect Obama, a director of a prestigious think tank called the Police Executive Research Forum and a frequent guest lecturer and panelist in a variety of law-enforcement venues.

Since Mayor David N. Cicilline made him chief in early 2003, Esserman has molded his Police Department into an exemplar of community policing — a philosophy now entrenched across the nation that emphasizes decentralization of power, problem-solving and prevention rather than reaction to crime, and collaboration with the citizenry, community groups and other agencies inside and outside law enforcement.

“I think all of us now, curmudgeons and alike, agree that crime has gone down here in the last five years pretty significantly,” Esserman said. “And violence has gone down here significantly.”

Esserman’s name has cropped up for law-enforcement posts in other cities, including as police commissioner in Philadelphia and as chief in Milwaukee, although it’s unclear if he had initiated an application for either appointment. He did make it clear last week, however, that he is not prospecting for another job. “I love being part of the mayor’s team,” Esserman said. “We love living in Providence and raising our children here.”

In 2008, Esserman and the department were recognized for an experimental program in which drug suspects were given an opportunity to salvage their lives through education and employment and escape prosecution.

As a champion of law enforcement education, Esserman is working to expand on the joint training sessions that he initiated between the Providence police and other New England police forces and to make his force an acknowledged leader.

“We want to call it a teaching police department,” he said, “using the model of a teaching hospital,”

—Gregory Smith

Frewoine Kassahun, refugee caseworker

Eight years ago, Frewoine Kassahun arrived in the United States as a refugee from Ethiopia. As a refugee resettlement caseworker for the International Institute of Rhode Island, Kassahun relies on personal experience to help others navigate life in a new country.

This past spring, Kassahun traveled to the Shimelba Refugee Camp in northern Ethiopia, a trip recorded in the documentary film, Home Across Lands, that premiered in Providence last month.

The film chronicles the work of the institute’s staff and volunteers as they guide Kunama refugees from the makeshift camp to their new home in Providence. Kassahun played a critical role as the only speaker of Tigrinya — a language spoken by the Kunama, an Eritrean ethnic minority.

“I was really touched by these people. It was emotional,” says Kassahun of the trip. “We were trying to establish connections” between Kunama in Providence and their family members at the camp — some of whom have either relocated here or will in the near future.

Kassahun currently works primarily with the Kunama, who fled Eritrea in 1998 when war broke out with Ethiopia. Because she speaks Arabic, she also assists Iraqi refugees here.

As part of a team, Kassahun handles at least 100 cases a year. The job entails everything from airport arrivals to housing orientation, how to shop and how the bus system works. Kassahun interprets during benefit applications, school registrations, medical and other emergencies.

“Some are lonely and fragile. Their only family is the International Institute,” says Kassahun. “They have to come and see you every day; you have to check on them.” She is always on call for emergencies.

—Karen Lee Ziner