Petite and twinkle-eyed, Virginia Wilson is hardly intimidating.

But for a quarter-century, Wilson, 84, has been a force to reckon with on behalf of New Mexicans living with mental illnesses.

Legally blind, she has to lean forward to see who's talking to her, and she uses a magnifying machine so she can read a stack of newspapers, studies and books every day.

Almost deaf, she has to fiddle with a hearing aide or ask visitors to speak loudly so she can hear them.

None of that has slowed her down.

She's known among friends, colleagues and legislators for speaking her mind to lawmakers. As a longtime member of the New Mexico Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Wilson has organized committees, written grants and actively lobbied for change. And she's been only a telephone call away for people who knew of no other place to turn.

Her goal has been to help individuals and their families better navigate the chaotic and isolating world of mental illness.

Still, Wilson said she was "astounded" when she found out about her award as one of 10 Who Made A Difference. "What this award really means is a validation of my voice," Wilson said with a characteristic smile.

"There is no person in the state who has provided more one-on-one help to more families in desperate need," said Peggy Harnish, NAMI-Santa Fe president, in her nominating letter.

Wilson waves off compliments. She said her role is connecting people and helping figure out how to make things better. "I support by being a helper. I like to be useful," Wilson said, sitting in the office of her Santa Fe home.

As with so much in her life, she has embraced the challenges of helping people with mental illnesses.

"So much of who I am is due to serendipity," she said. "I really enjoy life and take advantage of whatever situation comes along."

Wilson, the daughter of a World War I Marine, was raised on a farm near Houston. She attended the former Texas State College for Women in Denton, Texas. She graduated in 1943 with a Spanish degree and was immediately hired by the U.S. War Department to become a code breaker during World War II.

"I was just a farm girl. I had never been anywhere," Wilson recalled.

She ended up working on Japanese code in Washington, D.C. "They didn't need anyone until later who knew Spanish," she said.

A cryptoanalyst basically looks for patterns in messages, she said, something she was good at. "I'd always liked puzzles, taking things apart and putting them back together," she said.

After the war, she traveled to Europe. In England's Lake District, she met Stacey Wilson, a Royal Air Force pilot who had trained in Oklahoma. They hiked together for five days and, resting on a mountain top, he asked her to marry him.

After a brief stubborn period, so she could finish her trip, she said yes.

They lived in England and then Ohio, where her husband pursued a civil engineering career.

They had two sons, and she settled into life as a stay-at-home mom. But as the boys grew older, Stacey encouraged her to work again. "He told me I was getting dull," she said with a chuckle.

She taught Spanish, working with a woman who developed language classes based on group dynamics.

The family moved to Alaska for her husband's work. She became fascinated with the native Inupiaq language. She studied Inupiaq and worked with other scholars to help develop written lesson plans in the native language. By then, she also read and spoke some Italian, French, German and Russian.

After her husband retired, they moved to New Mexico in 1979.

The following year, a family member was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Suddenly the couple found themselves in a strange, unknown territory, trying to help their loved one. "We didn't know how to deal with it," she said.

Psychiatrists at the time knew little about helping clients and would mainly treat illnesses with drugs. Doctors told the Wilsons the mental illness was permanent and irreparable.

They met crisis after crisis with love and patience. They learned about the stigma and misinformation surrounding mental illness.

Then, a St. Vincent Regional Medical Center case manager told them about the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Wilson attended the next meeting of Santa Fe's NAMI and went home with a loaned copy of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey's Surviving Schizophrenia. The book gave them hope. Over time, their family member found ways of coping and started a successful career.

Wilson attended the first state NAMI conference in 1985. "I've gone to every meeting since," she said.

But she didn't just go to meetings. She met everyone who had anything to do with mental illness cases: social workers, therapists, doctors, lawyers, police, service providers and others. She wanted to know exactly where to direct people who needed help.

She became a founding member of the NAMI Santa Fe Chapter.

"NAMI is all about education, support and advocacy," Harnish said. "Those are Ginny's middle names."

Wilson doesn't take the answer "no" lightly. When a woman called her, terrified that her mentally ill daughter would wander off, Wilson called the local crisis response team. They said they couldn't help because the family didn't live in Santa Fe County. Wilson investigated further and found the family lived just inside the county line. She told the team to go help, and they did.

Wilson has argued with police for not picking up people diagnosed with mental illness who are on the verge of hurting themselves. "The law used to say if people were a threat to themselves through neglect, police could pick them up and take them to treatment," she said. "I don't know when it changed. I would have fought it."

Like other advocates, Wilson wants to change the negative stereotype the public has of mental illness. Where a person suffering from an illness such as cancer engenders sympathy in the public, people with mental illnesses tend to be feared and misunderstood, Wilson said.

Wilson worked with other NAMI Santa Fe organizers to open the Santa Fe Clubhouse this year. Modeled on a successful program started in New York City by people with mental illness in 1948, the clubhouse is run by the clients alongside staff. Clients track the budget, produce a newsletter, fix meals and host community events.

The clubhouse helps clients learn job skills and works with businesses in the community to place people in permanent jobs. Wilson's new goal is to raise money for clubhouse programs and to buy a 15-passenger van.

Her NAMI colleagues credit her with helping them through their own hard times and providing a lifeline to many people in the community.

When Catherine Hebenstreit, chair of the Santa Fe Clubhouse board, joined NAMI, Wilson became her mentor. "I had never written a grant before or lobbied. Ginny told me who to talk to and how to deal with legislators," Hebenstreit said.

Legislators know her well at the Roundhouse. She's the slender, small, grey-haired lady with a pair of binoculars or a monocle trained on them so she can read their lips.

And if they don't mean what they say about supporting people with mental illness, she's liable to nail them on it later. Nicely.

To learn more about the Santa Fe Clubhouse, send an e-mail to santafeclubhouse@comcast.net.