Sonja Waller was a small person “with a great big, infectious laugh,” said her supervisor, Marilyn Carmichael, at the Denver office of the Colorado Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.
Waller died of ovarian cancer on July 29, one week after her 60th birthday.
Waller “touched hundreds of lives” while helping people get jobs, said a client, Peg Adamson of Denver.
Waller helped Adamson, a veteran who had a variety of jobs including art work and house painting before going to voc-rehab, hit upon woodworking. “Bingo,” Waller told her. “That’s it.”
Adamson, now 55, is still training but plans to be in the business until she dies. “I’ll probably make my own casket,” she said.
“Sonja was a fantastic listener,” she said. “She touched hundreds of lives.”
Waller, a rehabilitation counselor, had an “engaging, funny personality and was really good with people,” said Carmichael, noting that some clients, especially those with disabilities, presented challenges.
Waller’s niece, Dawn Plooster of Arvada, said Waller “cared deeply about her clients and whatever they needed. And she was a fun person. She couldn’t walk down the street without making a friend.”
Sonja Waller was born in Pueblo on July 22, 1948, and graduated from Pueblo East High School. She went to college after her children were grown, earning a bachelor’s degree in communications at the University of Colorado Denver and a master’s in rehabilitation counseling at the University of Northern Colorado.
Her first husband, Lyle Safranek, was killed in an explosion in Crete, Neb., when a train hit a railroad car loaded with ammonia.
Safranek was killed by flying timber when he went outside to see what was going on. His wife took their son, Bryan Safranek, who had celebrated his first birthday that day, out to find Lyle Safranek and both were injured. Sonja Waller incurred lung and eye damage and had to have two cornea transplants. Bryan Safranek had third-degree burns on his stomach and one hand, he said.
Sonja Safranek had various jobs before going into voc-rehab, including computer programming and copy-editing for a magazine.
“She was definitely a courageous person and had enough within her to keep fighting all her life,” said her son.
Waller remarried twice and both those marriages ended in divorce, said her daughter, Jamie Jenkins -Shaw of Cheyenne.
In addition to her son and daughter, Waller is survived by five grandchildren, a brother, Robert Waller of Pueblo, and two sisters: Nora Pfeifer of Denver and Jane Cowden, Arvada.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
