Westonites of the Week: Maria & Lou Dempsey

Strength, sacrifice and grace are rarely combined. However, Westonites Maria and Lou Dempsey exemplify those qualities, and never more so than during their effort to equip Weston residences with free carbon monoxide detectors in the wake of a family tragedy.

Maria's sister Caroline Lofgren, along with her husband and two children, perished in a nationally publicized carbon monoxide accident during a vacation in a posh Aspen, Colo. home.

Instead of curling up into a little ball — as most might have done — the Dempseys opted to mobilize a town-wide safety and education effort, saving untold lives, in addition to working with a carbon monoxide detector company to pass statewide legislation in Colorado, Maine, Oregon and Washington requiring the installation of home detectors.

"It happened so quickly," Maria said in an interview with Patch. "Even though there were laws on the books, we realized that not everyone has a detector."

At its meeting last month, the Weston Police Commission named Maria and Lou Dempsey Weston's Citizens of the Year.

Lou Dempsey, a longtime volunteer with , felt "he needed to do something," Maria said. "We got so much support from the town."

The WVFD rallied around the Dempseys and helped organize the effort, along with Woody Bliss, John Pokorny, members of the police department, and untold others who "just kept on giving," Maria noted.

"The hundreds of letters, the flowers, the meals—it went on for a year," she said. "People even decorated our home for Christmas.

"We still don't know who did these things," she added. "It was very comforting. People gave us space, but we knew they were there for us."

When asked how they had the strength to complete such an undertaking during the grieving process, Maria said that "it was complete therapy.

"It gave [us] some comfort and direction and got us out of bed," she said. "At night we had work to do."

The Dempseys hope that their effort will translate into pilot programs in other towns. 

Lou "wrote up a list of what worked and what didn't," Maria noted. "Connecticut has a law in place, but laws don't get enforced. It's all about education and awareness and physically getting detectors into homes."

Although unquestionably well-deserved, Maria commented that winning the Citizens of the Year award was bittersweet.

Winning "really shows that the program was important and the town recognized it," she said. "Hopefully it will give other communities the drive to do it."

However, "it comes from a place that is so sad and tragic and life-changing," she added. "I don't feel proud, just sad. But I am very proud of Weston.

"We came together to make this happen at all levels, and that comforts me."

The Dempseys are still working to get out the message, locally and nationally, that this could happen to any of us.

"I feel much better, much stronger," she said.