On the recordJanuary 17, 2024
this is not the speech I really ever wanted to give. I appreciate being recognized to give it. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Pam Rosado, a longtime member of my staff, dedicated public servant, and advocate, whom we lost last week. I have known Pam from the community in her work as an advocate for unions and for social service agencies, and especially for people individually. And then she joined our office more than 4 years ago. I will get to that. She embodied the true meaning of service. She spent her life fighting for others. She understood and supported the whole idea of dignity of work. She bettered our State. She bettered our country. She touched so many lives along the way. She joined our staff in the beginning of 2019--almost 5 years ago--as a constituent advocate on our casework team. We don't think about it enough around here, but the foundation of our work in these jobs--the foundation of our work--is individual service to individual people. We look at, you know, taxes and Medicare and Social Security and foreign policy and Ukraine. All of those things obviously are important. It is what we are elected to do. But, fundamentally, these jobs are about helping individual people when they have an issue--whether it is Social Security, whether it is Medicare, whether it is a passport, whether it is a tragedy in somebody's life-- and we cut through redtape and do that.…





