About Tricia
I’m a lawyer, entrepreneur, and lifelong student of how things work and how they could work better.
My path to the law began with an extraordinary series of challenges that taught me something about courage, persistence, and the power of questioning systems that aren’t working.
The Floods That Changed My Life
On September 19, 2003, Hurricane Isabel flooded my home in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
It was the second flood that year.
For six days, my house stood underwater. Police closed the road, and I had to show my driver’s license to prove I lived there.
Inside that house were my children’s bedrooms, filled with filthy brown floodwater.
My marriage of sixteen years had disintegrated that same year. I was a newly single mother, teaching high school, working two or three jobs, and trying to hold together a life that seemed to be coming apart faster than I could repair it.
I had a mortgage on a house we couldn’t live in. My insurance company sued me over unpaid claims arising from the first flood. My estranged husband sued me for custody.
And I needed somewhere safe for my children to live.
I applied for and received FEMA temporary housing assistance. But the assistance came in two-month increments and didn’t cover the full cost of apartment rent. To secure a lower rental rate, I had to sign a longer lease without knowing whether FEMA would continue helping beyond the next eight weeks.
My family and friends loved me and supported me emotionally. But this was my problem to solve.
I knew that if I couldn’t find a permanent solution, I faced financial ruin—and potentially the loss of my children because I no longer had a home.
So I started researching.
Finding a Solution Nobody Was Offering
I discovered FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.
The program could fund the purchase of properties that flooded repeatedly, remove the structures, and return the land to public ownership, eliminating the recurring danger and expense.
My house and three neighboring homes had been built in the 1950s, before modern zoning and flood mapping. All four were chronically flooded properties.
Under the funding arrangement I identified, FEMA would contribute 75% of the properties’ preflood appraised values, Virginia would contribute 20%, and Chesterfield County would contribute the remaining 5%.
But Chesterfield had to apply.
I called my representative on the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors.
He didn’t return my call.
I called again. And again.
Eventually, I began showing up at Board meetings, hoping to speak with him in person.
I remember one occasion when he saw me in the hallway, turned on his heel, and walked rapidly in the opposite direction.
I wasn’t going away.
In January 2004, I secured a place on the Board’s agenda during public comment and presented my research and the case for applying for the grant.
The supervisors voted unanimously to apply.
They also voted unanimously that Chesterfield County would not contribute its 5%.
It wasn’t everything I’d sought, but it was a breakthrough. We had a path forward.
Sometimes You Just Need a Truck and Some PVC Pipe
While we waited for the government to act, I still had a badly damaged house to deal with.
The flood had lifted the back deck and pulled it away from the house. I had no idea when—or even whether—the buyout would happen. So I decided we should repair it and I came up with a plan.
My older brother, my dad, and a friend helped me jack up the deck. We slid lengths of four-inch PVC pipe underneath it, secured a chain, and used my brother’s truck to pull the deck back toward the house.
The pipes worked as rollers. It took one afternoon and worked beautifully. Afterward, I returned the undamaged pipes for a full refund!
Solving problems often does not require a complicated solution. Sometimes you need to understand the forces at work, use what you have, and be willing to try something unconventional.
Finding a Way Forward
Winning the Board of Supervisors’ approval was only the beginning. The grant application took months. Then we had to wait for FEMA’s decision. The funding was competitive, and there was no guarantee Chesterfield would receive an award.
Meanwhile, 2004 kept moving. I worked two or three jobs and paid the mortgage on a house we couldn’t live in. FEMA’s temporary housing assistance wouldn’t last forever. My children needed a permanent home.
By late summer, FEMA had approved the HMPG application, but the funding hadn’t been released. I couldn’t wait any longer.
The House Nobody Wanted
I found a filthy, neglected 1964 brick ranch house being sold at auction. The heirs had inherited a property in such poor condition that they knew an ordinary sale wasn’t practical.
But I saw something different. The house was solid and well built. It was in a good neighborhood, within walking distance of my children’s schools and the high school where I taught. I researched comparable sales and assessed its market value. Then I secured a commitment from a local bank for a $300,000 bridge loan that would refinance my flooded house and finance the purchase of the replacement home. I’d make interest-only payments until the government buyout was completed.
It was a calculated risk, but I believed the numbers worked. I won the auction. We closed in early October 2004.
Every afternoon after school, we went to work. We ripped out carpet, scrubbed years of nicotine from the walls, cleaned, painted, and repaired what we could. I replaced the old oil boiler with a propane system.
By Christmas, my kids had a new home.
One Final Hurdle
In the spring of 2005, Congress funded the hazard mitigation program. But the preflood appraisal of my house was still pending. Nearly two years had passed since Hurricane Isabel. The appraisal would determine whether the buyout was enough to repay the debt and leave me financially secure.
I couldn’t afford an appraisal that undervalued the property. So I prepared a brief with comparable waterfront home sales. I met the appraiser at the house and walked him through it. I had cleaned up the flood damage and made sufficient repairs that he could evaluate the property.
The appraisal was fair. By late 2005, Chesterfield County finally purchased the flooded house. I paid the county’s 5% share, resolved the financing, and closed that chapter of our lives.
Before signing the closing papers, thanks to a loaned paintball gun, we gave the old house a proper send-off. After two years of fighting floodwaters, insurance litigation, financial uncertainty, and bureaucracy, it was immensely satisfying.
My children and I had a safe home. We were financially stable. And I had discovered things about myself that I hadn’t fully understood before.
I am good at solving complicated problems. I liked figuring out how systems worked, finding opportunities others had overlooked, and building solutions where none seemed to exist. And I had learned that sometimes the only way forward is to challenge the system itself.
