By Damaris Christensen

Charting Her Course

With exacting precision, Heidi Nelson strives to make the world better

By Damaris Christensen

Nelson’s corner office, tidy underneath but with a surface layer of current papers and projects, reveals her dual focus on work and family. Multiple photos of her dark-haired, bright-eyed 7-year-old daughter perch on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and her crowded desk. Sarah, a magic marker minimalist, has dedicated several pictures on pink construction paper to her mother. The transformation her daughter has wrought in her life is also evident in some origami and a statuette of a soldier from a tomb in China. Her daughter loves the “American Girl” dolls, Nelson says, but she wants Sarah to stay in touch with her Chinese heritage.

Ever since Nelson was a child herself, she has always been curious and active, constantly exploring and learning, says her mother, Arleen Nelson. Now Heidi Nelson is sharing that personality, and her strong sense of family, with her own daughter. Just as her mom taught her to cook, Nelson spends many evenings teaching Sarah to peel vegetables safely, to crack eggs to make biscuits, and to love Brussels sprouts (by letting Sarah make the veggies’ sauce).

When Nelson adopted Sarah, she sold her carefully planted, tree-filled property in the countryside near Rochester and moved into the city to be closer to her daughter’s school. Nelson fell in love with her new home when, as she looked out a bedroom window at an 80-year-old maple tree, a yellow school bus pulled up just behind the leaves.

But after Nelson and her daughter moved into the house, a utility company dug up the roots of the majestic old tree, and it died. “I couldn’t bear the thought of this empty yard,” Nelson says, the ache still obvious in her voice. “But then the most remarkable transformation was able to happen.”

Working with some local landscapers, she mapped out a plan for the yard. “It’s been several years now and the neighbors still comment on how welcoming it is,” Nelson says. “That’s the stuff I enjoy: taking a problem and thinking, ‘let’s turn it around,’ and then doing it. I grew up believing that you should always try to make something better, to leave it a little better than you found it.”

And so, one tree at a time, one patient at a time, one child at a time, Nelson reaches out to make a difference.