Kane Co. Woman Returns Home After Haiti’s Coronavirus Shutdown

GENEVA, IL — Four years after leaving her life in Kane County behind to open a special education school in Haiti, Jamie Schumacher needed a little help getting home after the country shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Schumacher reached out to her friend in Geneva on March 19 to say she wouldn’t be coming home, and within hours, staffers at the office of U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Naperville) were working on her case, according to a report by the Kane County Chronicle.

Days later, Schumacher was back at the home of her friend, Susan Arch, and she recently paid tribute to Underwood and her staff for arranging a flight to get her out of Haiti.

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Schumacher said she and Arch spent two days working with the congresswoman’s staff as they tried to bring Schumacher and a constituent stuck in Peru back to Illinois, the report states.

Schumacher left her home in North Aurora in 2016, shortly after calling an end to her 20-year teaching career at Sam Rotolo Middle School in Batavia, the report states. She helped to establish The Haiti Center for Inclusive Education, which serves about 100 special-needs students, according to the report.

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Underwood said the coronavirus pandemic has created new opportunities for her to serve her constituents, the Kane County Chronicle reports.

"When our team learned of Jamie’s situation in Haiti, we worked around the clock to ensure the State Department helped her safely return to her family in Illinois," Underwood said in a statement. "We’re all in this together — from a nurse needing PPE [personal protection equipment], to a small business owner trying to keep their workforce on the payroll, to someone like Jamie desperate to get home to Illinois from abroad — it was my honor to be able to help.”

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