Dana Merk will be the first to admit she wears a “lot of hats.”

The 43-year-old North Aurora woman is a nurse and professor at DePaul University; co-founder of Headwaters, a nature-based Montessori school, cancer survivor and adopted mother of two young boys who she and husband Dan, a Jefferson Middle School teacher, are determined to raise with empathy for others.

They also want to “keep our children safe.”

Her 12-year-old is not only tall for his age but from the Philippines “and could pass for Latino” — both of which make her “concerned” at a time when ICE agents are targeting the local Hispanic community, Merk told me.

All that’s going on today “is making me lean more into our community,” she said, noting that most recently she and her family took part in the No Kings Rally in Auro

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