On a hazy Saturday afternoon, Heather Boyer opens the door to her Potterville home with gusto, smiling big and sweeping a hand toward her living room in a welcoming gesture. "Come on in," she says warmly.

Inside, the MSU student moves freely about the house, padding barefoot across the carpet and apologizing for a cluttered room before plopping down on a sofa. She's breezy, chatty and sincere.

Her relaxed demeanor doesn't give the slightest hint that home hasn't always been a place of comfort for her, or that, at 32 years old, she's a woman whose hardships have stemmed into a life mission.

Boyer is a rape survivor - twice. Her assaults occurred in unrelated incidents involving home invasions by two complete strangers, on two separate nights occurring more than a decade apart. In a world where only a small percentage of rapes occur between strangers, the only thing rarer than Boyer's case was her reaction to it.

"Most people aren't raped by a stranger twice in their life," she says. "I had to turn this into something positive."

That "something positive," for Boyer, took shape in the form of an organization dedicated to education and advocacy for victims of violent crimes. Boyer founded the Lansing-based nonprofit group Crime Victims Advocacy Council in 2001, and now spends much of her time speaking at schools, facilitating panel discussions and working with other community services such as forensic nurses and counseling centers.

There were, of course, negative repercussions for Boyer. She says she'll always have safety issues and probably won't date any time soon. But she is optimistic about her role in life.

"There's always times I get depressed, but I have to remind myself that the second rape happened for a reason - it was divine intervention," she says. "Someone knew up there that I was going to be able to make changes in people's lives."

Violated

The first time Boyer was sexually assaulted, she was home alone at her mother's house in East Lansing. A stranger broke into the house, raped her and left. She was 14 years old.

"I was only a kid, really. I had already had difficulties growing up," Boyer says. "When that happened, I just basically had a lot of issues. I ended up dropping out of school and I was in trouble a lot."

Boyer says she eventually came around, returning to school to obtain her General Educational Development degree and taking classes at Lansing Community College. But just as everything was falling into place, it happened - again.

The details of Boyer's second rape were eerily similar to those of her first, with the stranger breaking into her home in Lansing when she was alone. But this time the attack was more violent, with the assailant tying up and strangling Boyer before proceeding to rape her.

"I was convinced I wasn't going to survive. I just thought, 'This doesn't happen twice to somebody,'" says Boyer, who was 27 years old at the time of her second attack. "I just figured for sure this guy was going to kill me."

When Boyer went to the police station to report the incident, she was told her perpetrator's description matched that of a serial rapist who had already assaulted about a dozen women in the Lansing area over a two-year period. But when authorities sent her home saying they had no leads on who the assailant was, Boyer took matters into her own hands.

"I didn't know who he was, but I felt he lived somewhere nearby. I just took it upon myself to see if I could find him," she says. "It was something I had to do, and I just couldn't rest until I did."

The day after her rape, Boyer borrowed a pair of binoculars from a friend, stationed herself at a window and waited. Her intuition proved correct - after several hours, she saw her perpetrator enter a house across the street. Boyer called detectives and the man was caught soon after.

"It was empowering," Boyer says. "It definitely made me feel much better about the experience because I felt like I was able to get him back for what he had done to me."

Healing

But Boyer's problems didn't end with the capture of her rapist. She says the trial was a difficult process, and local news sources hounded her and the rapist's other victims. One newspaper printed a map detailing where all the rapes had occurred - including the location of Boyer's home - and a TV station aired a story with what Boyer calls "unnecessary" graphic details of her rape.

By the time the trial and its sensationalism had settled, Boyer once again took matters into her own hands.

"Basically, I took notes on what problems I had and what changes I would like to have seen. When my case was over, I approached the right people and tried to figure out a way (the criminal justice system) could be changed to make it easier for other victims."

Boyer began organizing the Crime Victims Advocacy Council, calling on friends and family to help her get the project underway. The council's first year was the most difficult, Boyer says, because local law enforcement and judiciary officials were wary of the organization's intentions.

"Prosecutors and police felt like it was a slap in the face. It took time for them to realize I wasn't doing this to try to insult them or to discredit the work they've done," she says. "It wasn't just me in a lot of pain after my experiences just kind of going out and doing something that didn't make sense. This actually made sense."

The council's original intent was to provide legal advocacy to crime victims, but funding problems have caused the group to focus more on educational outreach. Its most successful programs include Victim Impact Panels, which promotes dialogue between victims and offenders, and the Social Transition & Opportunity Project, which allows juvenile offenders to participate in social activities for rehabilitation.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, offenders are victims themselves and they're just acting out their pain on other people," Boyer says. "I really enjoy working with them because I really feel such a connection in helping them. It helps me to understand an offender's perspective, so it's really a healing, therapeutic project."

Boyer's mother, Karen King, also assists in running the council. She says the organization has helped both her daughter and herself cope with the devastation that came with the assaults.

"The first time was horrible and the second time was unbelievable," King says. "It's like being struck by lightning twice. It turns your whole life around - and not just her's, but everyone involved with her.

"But she pulled herself up. She's just got that determination and inner strength. You know that song, 'Wind Beneath My Wings?' Well, that's her. She's the wind. She's the strong one."

Hoping

Today, Boyer stays busy with the council, with her job as a corporate development assistant at a local radio station and with her studies at MSU. She says she feels positive about the future - for both her association and herself.

"I just see our organization growing every year," she says. "I hope to expand on everything we're doing now."

Boyer's personal and professional goals go hand in hand. As a senior studying psychology and pre-law as an interdisciplinary studies in social science major, she hopes to utilize her education to help her organization provide better advocacy and outreach. She also aspires to make the study of crime victims more prevalent in criminal justice classes.

In the meantime, Boyer says she'll keep striving to educate others about victims of sexual assault by using her own stories. She and the 30 or so council volunteers, many of them also sexual assault survivors, bring their cause to classes at MSU, Wayne State University and Lansing Community College as well as to juvenile detention centers and federal prisons.

By now, Boyer is used to speaking in public about very private issues. The topic doesn't upset her anymore - in fact, she prefers using a light-hearted approach to relating the details of her experiences with sexual assault.

"I can just make jokes about it. I don't mean to trivialize it, but people usually don't think that I am," she says. "They are just able to open their minds more rather than being so disgusted by it that they won't hear what I'm saying."

Boyer says founding and directing her organization is one of the best things she has done for herself. She feels a connection with the people she works with and hopes that she can continue to touch lives and help others.

"I'm a free spirit," she says, smiling. "I can talk openly about everything. I think that's why this is a task that has been given to me."

Emily Bingham is the State News projects reporter. She can be reached at binghame@msu.edu.