On March 18, 2020, we lost our dear friend and MAPS colleague, Sarah Sadler. Sarah started working for MAPS at the study site in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2010. She worked as study coordinator for four studies with Michael Mithoefer, M.D., and Annie Mithoefer, B.S.N., before she passed away, and was working with the Phase 3 team at the Charleston study site. As many of you who were blessed to meet Sarah knew, she was dedicated to her job and the participants she met along the way. If we thanked her for something, she often replied enthusiastically and with her wonderful warm smile, stating, “Oh, thank you, I love my job!”
During her ten years as study coordinator, Sarah talked to hundreds of potential participants on the phone and wanted to help every one of them. She had a gift of making people feel special. She always remembered what kind of snacks or flowers people liked when they came for experimental sessions, or would do things like leave a stuffed animal for a participant’s dog. When we would see her driving into the driveway at the office. deep in conversation with a study participant she had just picked up at the airport, along with her dog, Desoto, sitting in the participant’s lap, we sometimes wondered whether Sarah’s healing effects were even greater than the effects of MDMA.
Sarah was a very hard worker, and even on days when she received her cancer chemotherapy at the hospital, she would often be found at the office checking on things before going home to make dinner for her two boys, Henry (5) and George (2), and her wonderfully supportive husband, Jake. Sarah was a great cook, a designer, and a devoted mother to her children and partner to Jake. She was a bright light that will be missed by all of us at MAPS and everyone she touched.
(From left) Berra Yazar-Klosinski, Ph.D., MAPS Deputy Director and Head of Research Development and Regulatory Affairs, Sarah Sadler, and Michael Mithoefer, M.D., Senior Medical Director for Medical Affairs, Training and Supervision, and Annie Mithoefer, B.S.N., Sub-Investigator, MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD .
