The Rev. Jan Heglund traveled to Ground Zero soon after she heard about the 9/11 attacks.

“I just said to my husband, ‘I’m going. I want to be a participant, not an observer,’” she recalled.

As a San Rafael police chaplain, she worked late nights and early mornings for two weeks at St. Paul’s Chapel near the former World Trade Center site. Heglund helped serve food and ministered to relief and recovery workers who used the church as a sanctuary.

“If there was ever a field for ministry,” she said.

There was a New York firefighter at the church who refused to go home. He explained to Heglund that whenever he goes home he’s “flooded” by relatives who ask him if he saw people who were missing. “He said, ‘I’d rather be here,’” Heglund said.

The encounter at St. Paul’s Chapel was among a handful of experiences that the recently retired Lagunitas resident recalled after 27 years as San Rafael’s police chaplain. A celebration of her career with the police department is planned May 20.

Heglund also served as an FBI chaplain, and was a co-founder of the San Rafael nonprofit First Responders Support Network, which assists first responders who have post-traumatic stress. She was inducted into the Marin Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013.

“My answer would be every single part of it,” Heglund said when asked about what she found rewarding in being a chaplain.

The ordained Episcopalian deacon provided support for crime victims, witnesses and their families as well as first responders. Heglund said that she also officiated 85 weddings, delivered eulogies at funerals for law enforcement officers, and blessed a San Rafael city employee’s cat.

Whenever Heglund met someone in distress, she would simply comfort them. She noted a situation in which she got on the floor and held a woman whose husband died by suicide.

“I am there to meet you wherever you are,” said Heglund in describing her principle.

She recalled working in an FBI case during which a fleeing suspect was shot in a San Francisco couple’s garage. The chaplain blessed their house afterward.

“They were so appreciative,” she said about the couple. “It was a happy place where they raised their kids.”

The chaplain rode along with law enforcement officers to murders, traffic fatalities, bomb threats and other emergencies. She joined FBI agents when they were assigned to the 2019 Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting, where a gunman killed three and wounded 17.

Heglund said that she would not leave victims’ relatives at an incident scene until the coroner’s staff left.

“They wonder what comes next and where to go, and so l never left,” she said.

San Rafael Mayor Kate Colin said that Heglund has lived a life defined by service.

“San Rafael is forever shaped by her presence, and we are profoundly grateful for the love and light she’s shared with us all,” she said.

Heglund grew up in Portland, Oregon, where she left college and got on a Greyhound bus with a friend to San Francisco during the 1950s. She later settled in Marin County, where she raised a family with her husband, Richard Heglund.

Bart Sarjeant, her priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ross, encouraged her to become an ordained minister.

“You’ve been living an ordained life already,” she recalled Sarjeant telling her.

She was ordained as a deacon at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral in 1994.

Heglund became a law enforcement chaplain soon after she retired as an assistant to a vice principal at San Rafael High School.

“There was no day that wasn’t great,” she said of her experience at the school.

Heglund read a small announcement in the Independent Journal about the San Rafael police starting a chaplaincy program. She recalled when she sat at the San Rafael police station and waited for her interview.

“I thought, ‘This is me, it fits like a glove,’” she said. “I didn’t even know what it was yet.”

After starting her work as a chaplain, Heglund said that she knew that she “made it” when officers teased her during a staff briefing.

She reflected on her decision to retire.

“I believe in timing,” Heglund said. “That’s what I felt when I was at San Rafael High — you want to quit while you still love it. You want to quit while you’re at the top.”

San Rafael police Chief David Spiller described Heglund as an “amazing part” of the police staff and said they will miss her warmth and support.

“Of course, we all wish her the very best as she moves on to her next chapters, and we will always be grateful for her being there and being there for the community,” he said.