Since graduating sixth in her law school class as one of only a handful of women in a class of 188, Debra has been a trailblazer for others. Not long after  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire passed the bar exam and began practicing law in 1977, her hips started hurting. It was painful, but nothing she couldn't handle. She kept working and at 28 she was a high powered lawyer working on multi- million dollar deals. Then the pain struck with vengeance. One year, nine doctors and three misdiagnosis later--including bone cancer-Debra learned she had a form of arthritis called ankylosing spondylitis which was thought to rarely affect women. Finally, after years of unspeakable pain, she retired from law in 1988 because of her arthritis.

During her personal struggle, she sought information from the Arthritis Foundation and immediately became a volunteer for the organization. After just her first meeting with the Foundation, she initiated a series of governmental advocacy efforts that changed state law in Colorado to allow people with arthritis and others to qualify for handicapped parking permits.

Since then, Debra has fought tirelessly on behalf of more than 40 million Americans with arthritis. She has focused the views of more than 400,000 Arthritis Foundation volunteers on the need to elevate arthritis on the national agenda, the importance of issues such as funding for arthritis research, government advocacy for people with arthritis, the nature of chronic disease in a managed care health systems; and the critical need for collaboration among health agencies, the government and corporate America.