From the Denver Post:

It was just hours after a state prison inmate had sliced Pam Kahanic’s throat with a box cutter.

With a little luck, a lot of bravery and help from a convicted armed robber and her fellow corrections officers, Kahanic survived. Gathered around her hospital bed, Kahanic’s family wanted to know what she would do next if she somehow recovered from the wound and loss of blood.

“I’m going back to work,” her husband remembers her saying. Just six weeks later, she did.

“I didn’t just get up and quit, which would have been easy to do,” Kahanic said. “I needed to make a point and send a message.”

Kahanic, 55, who nearly died at the Limon Correctional Facility, has been back at work for more than a year now. After the man who tried to rape and kill her was sentenced, Kahanic last month chose to talk for the first time about her decision to return.For Kahanic, going back to work among killers, rapists and kidnappers has been a matter of necessity — and pride.

“You can’t show weakness,” she said. “I will walk in and look at them in the eye.”

I’m not sure how to word this without sounding disrespectful and blaming the victim. However, to be honest, in this case, I think the victim, along with the Colorado Department of Corrections, must take some responsibility. What female in her right mind believes herself to be safe in the following environment:

Limon Correctional is home to some of the state’s worst-behaved inmates. Just one step down from the maximum-security prison at Cañon City, it averages twice as many assaults by inmates on staff as other Colorado prisons.

Oh, and by the way, they are male inmates, not female.

But for Kahanic, her husband, Bob, and 313 others on the Eastern Plains, the prison is a steady paycheck and the promise of a decent state-provided retirement in an area where the economy seems to be perpetually lagging.

It was Bob, the prison’s chief case manager, who coaxed Pam to apply for a job as a corrections officer at the men’s prison, where she teaches inmates to sew. For her, it was no more dangerous than the Harley-Davidson he taught her to ride.

Justin Kaufman, 31, one of her two sons, and other relatives felt otherwise. He said she spent most of her life as a housewife raising five kids. She is only 5 feet 3 inches tall, soft-spoken and eager to do anything she could for people. He figured it was inevitable an inmate eventually would take advantage of her. On Sept. 12, 2007, one tried.

Seriously, what the crap is the Colorado Department of Corrections thinking here? I do not view this woman as a hero for going back into this situation, nor do I buy the excuse of the floundering economy and needing a job as an excuse. I am utterly appalled that we have female correctional officers guarding violent male criminals.

Oh, and her husband coaxing her to apply for the position in the first place?! I haven’t the words to even go there, other than what an major idiotic A-hole.