A Washington County woman recently received the Child Protective Caseworker of the Year Award at a statewide conference in Portland.

Rosa Tucker, who has been a state Department of Human Services caseworker for more than three years, said she was surprised by the recognition, “and I am honored to have received that award.”

What made Tucker’s award so unusual was the fact that she was nominated not by her supervisor, but by someone outside DHS. “In Rosa’s case, someone from the community nominated her,” said Mary Dunn, a DHS supervisor. Tucker does not know who nominated her.

A 1996 graduate of the University of Maine at Machias with a behavioral sciences degree, Tucker worked briefly for Families United before joining DHS.

“She was an invaluable player on a statewide committee to introduce the concept of motivational interviewing to the department,” Dunn said. “Her work on this committee demonstrated that she could conceptualize a process, which could result in better outcomes for families and children. … Rosa is a natural leader amongst her peers in the field of social work.”

Jane Smith, the mother of Samantha Smith, who received international attention after she wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov expressing her fears about nuclear war, established the award in honor of her daughter, who died in a plane crash.

Smith established an endowment with the Maine Community Services Foundation and each year the award is presented at the annual Child Abuse and Neglect Conference put on by the Spurwink Child Abuse and Neglect Program. This year’s conference was held Sept. 12 in Portland.