Phoenix (STN) – Tenasha Hildebrand, crisis and veteran services administrator at Mercy Care, grew up in an Army family, served in the Army herself, and moved around quite a bit along the way. Originally from Wyoming, she says one thing never changed: her desire to help people.
“After the military, I wanted something to still help people,” Hildebrand said. “That was really kind of my driving force of what I wanted to do.”
That drive led her into behavioral health, where she has worked for 24 years, the last 10 of them in crisis work.
Today, Mercy Care oversees the behavioral health crisis system for Maricopa, Gila, and Pinal counties, including the crisis phone line, mobile crisis teams, and crisis facilities. A big part of Hildebrand’s job is making sure people know those resources exist.
“There’s a lot of work that we do with educating the community about the resources, because I think there’s still a lot of stigma and people don’t know about the resources,” she explained. “So finding opportunities to create that awareness.”
Another significant part of her work is partnering with local, county, state, federal, and tribal law enforcement organizations. The goal is “to really find opportunities to divert people away from law enforcement into the behavioral health system when it’s appropriate.”
For Hildebrand, what keeps her energized is the person on the other end of a crisis and the team standing beside her.
“I feel very blessed to be able to do this work with my team, who are very talented, and I think that is what gets me excited: that the person who might really be distressed or families who might be really concerned about a loved one, that these resources exist for that person.”
