Amid the midday noise and traffic at Southeast 52nd Avenue and Foster Road, the Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families carves out an oasis of calm. Inside the large white house, sunlight glances off walls hung with quilts and children's drawings. Stuffed animals are everywhere. On a couch in the living room, surrounded by binders from the weekend's volunteer training, sits a small blonde woman sporting a denim jacket and pink-and-black sneakers. With one foot tucked up beneath her, Jana DeCristofaro nurses her morning coffee and muses about her job as the center's Coordinator of Children's Grief Services. "You definitely can't coordinate grief," she says. "It's like taking cats on a walk in the woods with a leash." She laughs, and in that moment illustrates several qualities coworkers and volunteers note about her: Insightful. Wry sense of humor. Always learning and questioning. "She doesn't have a facade of, 'Oh, I have to pretend to know everything," says Donna Schuurman, the centers national director. What she does have, people say, is a lot of heart. DeCristofaro, a Connecticut native, came to Oregon in 1995 to work as a waiter at Crater Lake Lodge. The following year, she moved here to stay. In 2001 she graduated with a master's in social work from Portland State and got a job doing reserach for PSU's Regional Research Institute. "Then I realized, my soul doesn't feel so good," she recalls. "It's leaking out of my fingers and into my keyboard." A friend recommended she volunteer at the Dougy Center. Despite having no formal experience working with grief and loss, she gave it a shot. She was hired a few months later. Now, DeCristofaro leads support groups for kids, teenagers and young adults who have lost a parent or sibling. She also coordinates the center's 150 plus volunteers, teaching them to lead groups and helping them deal with the with of grief that's a constant reality for all Dougy workers and volunteers. It's all pretty heavy stuff for a woman who's just 31, but she takes it in strideliterally. DeCristofaro calls physical activity the key to staying healthy when death becomes your everyday occupation. "Grief lodges in your cells, and it lodges in your muscles, and it lodges in your bones," she says. Working at the Dougy Center has helped DeCristofaro realize death can't be avoidedbut you can learn to be ready for it. "It makes you keep relationships clean, " she adds.