She stood only 5 feet 4 inches and weighed 110 pounds, but nothing and no one scared MaryAnn Stuart, a sergeant in the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office.
Stuart, who could take down a prisoner or calm one with talk, died May 22. She was 71. Though fighting various health problems, she worked until three days before she died.
“She was tougher than nails, but the inmates respected her, and she respected them,” said Pueblo Sheriff Kirk Taylor.
“(She could) see through people and spot a lie a mile away,” he said. “She wasn’t afraid of anything, and she should have been — she was so little.”
If a prisoner became verbally abusive, Stuart “scolded them like kids,” said her daughter Shanda Kramer of Crown Point, Ind. “And if she got in a scuffle with a prisoner, she’d win. She was trained.”
For several years, Stuart worked with prisoners on the five floors of the jail.
“She realized all people didn’t have the same breaks in their lives,” said her twin brother, Robert Sumey of Pueblo, so she encouraged inmates to get their general equivalency diplomas, attend drug and alcohol programs, and be involved in activities.
In the last several years of her 23-year career at the Sheriff’s Office, she did background checks on job applicants and promotion-minded staffers.
“She was like a bulldog and had an investigative mind,” Taylor said.
“She was a sweet person, but she could be stern,” said her cousin and lifelong friend Shirley Welborn of Pueblo.
Stuart, who often called people “Kiddo,” would admonish an inmate with “Hey, Kiddo, you know that’s not really the way to talk to me.”
Always generous, she bought pizza for inmates who had been on the cleaning crew, Kramer said.
Stuart’s job was her life, family and co-workers said, and she thought calling in sick was close to a sin. “She tried to talk people out of missing work,” said Lt. Linda DeSalvo. Stuart rarely missed a day of work.
Co-workers often called her “Mom,” and she knew how to bring a sense of calmness to the floor, Taylor said.
MaryAnn Sumey was born in Pueblo on Aug. 30, 1938. She married Robert Stuart, and they had two daughters but later divorced. They lived in Chicago for several years, and her work with at-risk kids led to her interest in working with inmates, Welborn said.
Before working at the jail, she worked at a convenience store.
In addition to Kramer and sibling Sumey, she is survived by another daughter, Michelle Tassone of South Chicago Heights, Ill.; four grandchildren; and two great- grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
