AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Imagine getting a call from law enforcement, it’s late in the evening, you just found the most comfortable spot in your bed, but as soon as you get that call, you’ve got 20 minutes to reach your destination. Once you’re there, no matter how difficult the day was, or how busy you were, nothing compares to sitting with a family who just experienced someone dying by suicide.
Remarkable Women 2026
Jae Casias is one of many volunteers for Amarillo’s Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors or L.O.S.S. Team. Amarillo unfortunately has a suicide rate that’s higher than the national average, and Jae said when she started to volunteer she “wanted to help people not feel the way that I felt”.
Jae knows what losing someone to suicide feels like, she was 18 when her best friend died by suicide, Jae says she was “happy, beautiful” and just got accepted into college, she says “there was no reason that we knew as to why that happened”. She was also balancing this experience with being a single mother, having her first son at 17, graduating high school and getting married at a young age. It’s believed that those who lose someone to suicide don’t seek help for 4 to 7 years after, something Jae experienced herself, but with the L.O.S.S. program they’ve cut that rate significantly. All of the above is only part of Jae’s story and what makes her such a Remarkable Woman.
Her nominator Emma knows first-hand how amazing Jae is, because she’s known her since she was about 5-years-old. Emma says you can hear and feel Jae enter a room before she is even there, not by her stature (they joke she is short) but by her energy and personality. Emma and our crew noticed immediately that Jae has this bubbly and upbeat personality, all of us wondering how does she show up to some of the toughest moments of a person’s life, still balance her roles as a mother, wife, sister, daughter and friend, and still stay so positive?…