From trailblazing cop to her tireless efforts on behalf of veterans as UnityPoint Health-Trinity’s military program coordinator, Sherri Behr DeVrieze has made a career of bettering the lives of others.
These days she isn’t just an advocate but “an absolute warrior in the mission of helping Quad Cities veterans reap benefits earned in service to their country,” husband Craig DeVrieze wrote in one of a stack of letters lauding this 2025 Woman of Influence honoree.
Ms. DeVrieze told the QCBJ her service to others was inspired by her family, especially her military vet and veterinarian father Dr. Larry Tadlock, who “had a heart for community service.” Among his community contributions were 50 years service to Rock Island Rotary and working with other veterinarians to open the Quad Cities Emergency Animal Clinic.
While Ms. DeVrieze was always pro-veterans, helping them turned into a passion 17 years ago when her son Dillon Behr was gravely wounded during an ill-fated joint U.S. Special Forces and Afghan commando mission on an Afghanistan mountain.
“He is why I do what I do,” Ms. DeVrieze told the QCBJ.
The firefight was brutal, but it wasn’t tragic for her Green Beret son thanks to the care he received after he was seriously injured barely a month before he was to come home from his last deployment.
One of his wounds was particularly nasty because Ms. DeVrieze said, “It blew off the head of his femur. That caused him to spend months at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center living without a hip she said“because his pelvis was fractured as well and that is the slowest growing bone.”
Ms. DeVrieze was able to spend nearly a month with her son thanks to the military for funding her flights, her Trinity bosses who gave her time off, and the co-workers – many of whom she didn’t know yet – who gave her their vacation days because as a relatively new employee she had little time in her bank.
At Walter Reed, she said her son “got the best treatment” and access to liaisons whose job was to ensure he got what he needed. “I think that should happen for everybody, not just the Special Forces. It’s important that we take care of our military members when they are injured,” Ms. DeVrieze said.
“That’s basically what we’re trying to do is make sure that they get the benefit that they need and are entitled to,” she added. Among the efforts she’s helped drive to make that happen is the Quad Cities Community Veterans Exchange Board (QC CVEB), which Ms. DeVrieze has co-chaired since its 2018 launch. That organization was awarded the QCBJ Nonprofit Collaborator of the Year award in 2024 for its Quad Cities Veteran Experience Action Center, a one-stop-shop for critical veterans services.
The QC CVEB is “doing amazing work and I’m so passionate about that,” she said. She’s also high on the new Women Veterans of the Quad Cities group launched on Women Veterans Day, June 12, 2024.
It’s easy to understand Ms. DeVrieze’s affinity for the women who fought to protect and preserve the nation. Long before joining Trinity in 2007, she was blazing her own trail as Bettendorf’s first female police officer.
“There were a lot of people at the time who didn’t feel like women should be in that occupation and I had to prove myself over the years and I think I did that, for the most part. I had to compete at a higher level so that I would be seen as good or equal to.”
She quickly rose through the ranks, including serving as a detective and special agent with the bi-state Quad Cities Metropolitan Enforcement Group. “Being a leader of men at the time for me was pretty amazing,” she said.
Her advice to future women trailblazers is this: “Don’t let anyone limit what you think you can do. Hard work has value, and be better than what people expect.”
Words of Wisdom:
“Don’t let anyone limit what you think you can do. Hard work has value and be better than what people expect.”
Childhood hometown: Granite City, Illinois.
Residence: Moline.
Family: Married to Craig DeVrieze. Her son Dillon Behr is married with children.
Education: B.A., Psychology, Augustana College; Master’s in Criminal Justice, St. Ambrose University.
Bio
Childhood hometown: Granite City, Illinois.
Residence: Moline.
Family: Married to Craig DeVrieze. Her son Dillon Behr is married with children.
Education: B.A., Psychology, Augustana College; Master’s in Criminal Justice, St. Ambrose University.
