WASHINGTON — Sharon Nichols is among the thousands of Congressional staff members who work in the House of Representatives office buildings adjacent to the U.S. Capitol. She went to work on Jan. 6, 2021, intending to receive her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Instead, Nichols spent several terrifying hours locked inside her office alone. She was unsure if the footsteps she heard in the hallway outside belonged to other staff, law enforcement or anyone else intent on violence and mayhem.
"The reminders are everywhere. I think about it often," Nichols said.
More than a year later, a mass exodus of Capitol Hill staff has unfolded and for those who remain, like Nichols, safety remains a paramount concern.
"I don't think anything is going to eliminate the risk because nothing can," she said. "There's risk in waking up every morning. There's risk every time you walk out the door."
After thousands of interviews and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, the Jan. 6 House committee's work product is finally being seen by the public, during prime-time TV hours. Nichols says it's a culmination of work her peers have waited and longed for.
"People are encouraged," she said over Zoom Thursday. "It won't undo all the hurt, the emotional trauma. But, we are encouraged the hearings are happening and people are paying attention and it will be treated like the significant day it was."
What is born out of the committee's work and the public hearings is yet to be determined, whether it's a slate of recommendations on how to better secure staff and facilities in the future or even to refer criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and others to the Department of Justice.
"My hope is that this will shed light on everything that went wrong that day and the bad actors -- the people who proactively made that happen," said Nichols. "It will help us review what happened that day, our vulnerabilities and how we can prevent it from happening again."
Although it can be difficult to block out the events of the past or ignore the mental trauma many staffers endured on Jan. 6, for Nichols, going to work every day isn't about collecting a paycheck. It's about helping to ensure the strength and resiliency of the American political system.
"Democracy does not exist by default," she said. "It is not inevitable. It's not anything we're entitled to. It exists because of the difficult work done by the people who uphold it. I'm proud to play a small part of that."