Episode 23: Kim Larson; Eight Kids, Nine Hours, Zero Quiet

Send us Fan MailA licensed daycare in a small town sounds simple until you hear what it actually demands: nine-hour days, strict ratios, constant trust from parents, and almost no margin for error. We sit down with Kim Larson, a longtime in-home child care provider in Haines, Alaska, to trace how she got here and why her work has quietly held up families for decades. From Kansas roots to growing up in Anchorage, Kim’s path is full of grit, humor, and the kind of consistency that kids and communities depend on.Then the story turns. Kim walks us through the December 2020 storm and the Haines landslide that took her daughter Jenae. We talk about the chaos of those first hours, the community search, and the strange ways grief shows up later: songs that stop you cold, anniversaries you try to spend out of town, and the exhausting reality of living near reminders that never get fixed. Kim also shares how Jenae’s Playground came to life, turning love and loss into a space built for kids, joy, and memory.We also get practical and political about the child care shortage in rural Alaska: why home-based care can be more reliable than a center, how staffing rules can shut programs down overnight, and how a federal food reimbursement program can fail the “last provider standing” because nobody will travel to do an inspection. If you care about child care, community resilience, disaster recovery, and what real support looks like after trauma, this conversation stays with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.