Heart scare gave this Northsider another way to serve
Jacara Warfield is a community health coordinator for Pillsbury United Communities.
Story and Photos by David Pierini, Editor
Jacara Warfield hoped her surgeon’s small hands were up to the task of rerouting delicate veins to keep blood pumping through her heart.
Warfield had three clogged arteries in October of 2022, but not the usual symptoms to suggest an imminent heart attack. There was no “elephant sitting on her chest,” a phrase commonly used to describe a sensation of pressure and no sharp pains.
She just felt tired.
Not knowing whether she’d survive open heart surgery, Warfield made a humorous request as she was wheeled into the operating theater.
She told the surgeon, “Make me a pretty cut.”
Warfield, 57, allows the top of the “zipper” scar running down the center of her chest to peek out the neckline of her tops. It is part of her testimony when she speaks to women about heart health. She uses her story to urge women to advocate for themselves, especially when the doctor is not taking them seriously.
“I want people to know I’m just as broken as they are. I’m not as whole as I used to be,” said Warfield, a community health coordinator for Pillsbury United Communities. “My story is what leads people to trust me and be able to build that bridge that’s been broken for a long time for community. Not all doctors are bad. There are doctors who genuinely care about what happens to you and want to figure out what’s wrong. But you have to tell them what’s going on, and you have to advocate for yourself.”
If you don’t know Warfield, you have likely seen her smiling face with freckled apple cheeks on the side of buses, on billboards, and in advertisements. She is one of a group of Black and Indigenous women selected by Hennepin County to promote women’s heart health.
Warfield talks about heart health and lead poisoning awareness at a women’s health luncheon in April.
The Hennepin Board of Commissioners allocated $1 million last year to promote women’s heart health. The campaign was inspired by Angela Connely, a county commissioner who survived a heart attack and shared her story as part of the campaign.
In addition to the ad campaign, money goes to clinics and community organizations that work in Black and Indigenous communities to offer health screenings, organize health fairs, offer nutrition and cooking classes, and provide resources for increased care coordination. On the Northside, this includes North Point Health and Wellness Center, Broadway Family Medicine, and the Northside Residents Redevelopment Council.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Black and Indigenous women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In 2021, the number of people dying from poor heart health was four times higher in Indigenous residents and two times higher in African American/ Black residents, according to Hennepin County public health data.
Symptoms can be more subtle in women, and Warfield had diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. Knowing what she knows now, she wonders why doctors did not speak frankly of the potential risks and offer tests to check her heart.
“I wasn’t feeling anything leading up to that day,” said Warfield, a community health coordinator for Pillsbury United Communities (Disclosure: North News is owned and operated by PUC). “I was running around with my daughter at Walmart, and I couldn’t keep up. I was just tired. I told myself I would go home and take a nap, and if I didn’t feel better, I would go to the hospital.
“When I woke up, I felt this pain radiating down my left arm. That was God twisting my arm, like ‘Get up! This is not a joke.’ I knew at that point.”
In the hospital and waiting for surgery, Warfield prepared for her life to end. She considered signing a Do Not Resuscitate Order, met with her pastor and made peace with the God twisting her arm. She repented, she said, and gave thanks for a full, rollercoaster life.
In Warfield’s office is a model of how plaque can build up in arteries.
Surgery was successful, and when she woke in recovery, she found her feet being placed on a familiar path.
Always a caretaker
Warfield was raised in North Minneapolis by loving grandparents whose health was declining by her early teens. She took care of her grandfather and later, her grandmother. It was not a role forced on her. As the oldest child in the house, caring for and nurturing those around her felt natural and necessary.
“I just sort of picked it up and took it on and assisted them,” she said. “When I was about 17, she said, ‘Please promise me that you’ll never put me in a nursing home.’ That kind of touched me and I promised. I never put either one of them in a nursing home. I was a caretaker from an early age.”
She held several jobs throughout her life and always gravitated toward work that served others. She has spent the last 20 years working off and on for PUC in its many social enterprises, including workforce development, overseeing community meals, and providing health information and resources.
When a fire at the Franci Drake Hotel, displaced more than 200 unhoused people temporarily sheltered there, PUC asked Warfield to oversee displacement services. She helped people find housing, connect with organizations for basic needs like clothing and food, and even helped a blind man replace his specially modified phone and computer.
The program ended just as the COVID-19 pandemic spread through Minnesota. Still, PUC leadership asked her to stay to help with educational outreach on best safety practices, including masking, where to get testing, and eventually oversee vaccine events.
Chronic health problems in the Black community made residents particularly vulnerable to the deadly virus, and historical trauma gave rise to a righteous distrust in health care. Warfield was one of several Northsiders re-enforcing the necessity of masking up, testing for the virus, and helping wary folks understand that vaccines were safe and effective.
Warfield took on other health advocacy roles, overseeing a health fair at North Market and organizing Narcan training as fentanyl overdoses began to rise.
“I have done so many different things,” she said. “Even when I was an administrative assistant, I did a lot of work with people coming into the building from all walks of life. I love to conversate and I love to give information. There were so many families coming in with so many things I could relate to. People were inclined to tell me their secrets and I was honored to be that person.”
Her deep love of North Minneapolis and her connection to Northsiders helped PUC programs in North flourish. There is a humble stillness to Warfield when she leans in, her unflinching Brown eyes soft and warm, as she listens. Sometimes, she can help direct them to a resource. She is also willing to sit with people who merely need to vent.
“She is always on the front lines and is very, very, very patient,” Lisa Dunlap said of her friend.
Lisa Dunlap, who has known Warfield since their teens, worked with her in the former Ways to Work program at PUC. Residents could get resources for jobs, food, and even a car loan through the program.
Together, they organized Thanksgiving dinners at the Oak Park Neighborhood Center, pulling an all-nighter to cook turkeys with plenty of side dishes.
Dunlap said they are like sisters. She remembers how she and Warfield helped people with water, food, and clothing after the 2011 tornado that leveled Northside homes.
“She is always on the front lines and is very, very, very patient,” said Dunlap, now the executive director of the Adults’ & Children’s Alliance. “She’s just got a big heart, and she wants to treat everybody right. People find solace in her and they always walk away smiling. When you work in community, you can’t just fix things with a Band-Aid. You fix it with the conversations you have, and she has long conversations with people, putting things together to figure out what people need.
“She’s always figuring out how not to just put a band-aid on it.”
Resiliency and self-care
Warfield said Black women are expected to be resilient in the face of obstacles to make ends meet and provide for a family. They will push through aches and pains and put off seeing a doctor to get through a day, a week, a month, and longer, she said.
When Warfield began to feel tired, she was in a Walmart with her daughter. She was having trouble keeping up with the pace of their walking, and her daughter advised that she go to the hospital. Warfield declined, fairly certain she was encountering side effects of medication. She went home, and when she woke up from a nap, she knew she was in trouble.
“It's such a tough thing to emphasize for women to take care of themselves,” said Samantha Lucas-Pipkorn, a community health program supervisor for Hennepin County Public Health. “So many women are the matrix of their family. They keep things running, and when you're going about the day-to-day, you think you don’t have time for that. The goal of this campaign is for women to take care of themselves.”
At a recent women’s health luncheon at North Market, Warfield shared her story and implored the women in the room to practice regular self-care.
Warfield is still a devoted servant but has learned to set boundaries for herself. She sometimes reminds family who make demands on her time to find their own way so she can rest.
Friends have always told Warfield she had a story to tell. She bristled at this idea but saw how people related and responded when she would tell them something about her life.
“I never thought my story had power. I just never thought it mattered,” said Warfield, who was 16 when she lost her mother. She also survived high-risk pregnancies. “My mother being murdered is a story, but it wasn’t a story to me. It was a living hell. But my story has been building.
“I keep striving for the best and keep telling my stories because someday, somebody’s going to hear it and it’s going to make a difference for them.”
(Disclosure: North News is owned and operated by Pillsbury United Communities.)