2025 Change Maker of the Year: Julia Cochrane
By Kathie Meyer
When it comes to homelessness, Julia Cochrane has all of the “deets.” Her activism for this particular social problem started in her youth in New York City and continues to this day in her 70s here in Jefferson County.
Chosen as one of the Jefferson County Beacon Change Makers for 2025, Cochrane will have made Port Townsend her home for 40 years in 2026. Sometimes she has teetered on the edge of insecure housing situations herself. All of the time, she has worked tirelessly for those who struggle getting by “at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” as Cochrane puts it.
For a long while, Cochrane used her rental home to house teenagers who needed an alternative place to live. Some of them have since become contributing adults in the Port Townsend community.
“I lived with her when I was a teenager, and I have no idea how many other folks in this community can say the same thing,” said City Council member Amy Howard in her nominating statement.
“No other person in Jefferson County gives as much time and energy in the cause of helping those who are most forgotten and ignored by our society,” said another nomination.
Cochrane’s activist path has led her to create the Winter Welcoming Center, now located in the Pope Marine Building. She saw the gap between when the American Legion shelter closed in the mornings and when the public library opened; she decided people could use a place to go during those in-between hours, especially during the cold, winter months and figured we could do better; and we did.
Things started out in the Castle Hill neighborhood until they were interrupted by the pandemic. Now, downtown in the Pope Marine Building, it makes more sense to be close to the Legion shelter. With grant funding and donations, the center is now open from 8:30 am to 4 pm, seven days a week, through mid-April.
While she may be considered the “driving force” behind working with homelessness, Cochrane gives immense credit to the staff at the center, including Ben Casserd, the center’s manager. The First Presbyterian Church, led by Pastor Paul Heins and his spouse, Elizabeth Heiner, are the fiscal sponsors who Cochrane mentioned numerous times in the telling of the center’s story as well.
In addition to the Winter Welcoming Center, Cochrane also facilitates the Help Now Fund, which helps families with immediate needs, such as housing a mother and her kids in a hotel until they can find a suitable shelter. This, she estimates, is a couple of weeks away.
With the relocation of the Legion shelter to the Castle Hill neighborhood near the WA State Department of Social and Health Services office next year, Cochrane is planning to move the Winter Welcoming Center to the same neighborhood. Why does she do it? Well, it certainly isn’t for any kind of reward. “I don’t believe in karma,” she said, reasoning that people suffering on American streets or in Palestine did nothing to deserve it.
It should come as no surprise that Cochrane plans to donate her share of the award money to the Winter Welcoming Center.
