Patti Miller was struggling in more ways than one when she first met Tim Walz as a student at Mankato West High School. The Minnesota governor was known to her as Mr. Walz, a widely beloved geography teacher and football coach at the school who had also taught her sister.
Now 37, Miller’s teenage years were marred with anxiety and depression. Her father had been struggling with addiction for years and was sent to prison on drug trafficking charges around the time she began Walz’s class. Her mental health issues had led her to self-harm, and she had trouble staying engaged at school.
“I felt like an outsider. At one point my mom was even like: ‘I might have to put you in a hospital. I don’t really know what to do anymore,’” Miller told The Daily Beast in a phone interview Wednesday. “It was tough. I guess I just didn’t really know how to express my feelings very well. I didn’t know how to deal with them.”
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One class, however, brought her some reprieve—and it was taught by a teacher who would later become the Democratic nominee for vice president. Looking back, Miller remembers Walz’s class as something of a sliding doors moment, without which her life may have taken a very different course.
“It’s pretty amazing what one person can do,” Miller, who now works as a ceramicist in Portland, Oregon, said. “Even if he didn’t know I was going through all of that—accidentally changing somebody’s life in a major way, you know, that’s kind of what teachers do. What a good teacher can do.”
Walz “really thought it was really important for us to understand the cultures and religions of the world,” Miller said.
“I kind of remember him mentioning that we had a disproportionate amount of classes about America and its history all throughout our high school. Yet we had this like one semester to learn about the entire world.”
For Miller, the class was also a gateway into a skill that would help deal with her anxiety for years to come: “I remember him teaching us about Taoism and Buddhism. And I ended up getting into meditation because of that.”
The former teacher had the unique ability to get through to students that are “just totally disillusioned,” she said. Miller could “get down on our level. It just makes the biggest difference in the world.”
Miller’s 40-year-old sister, Kathryn, shared similar sentiments about Walz, crediting him with “playing a big part in getting her [sister] back on track.”
“You know, there are some teachers that are kind of just clocking in and clocking out. Yeah. But you can tell he really, really wanted to be there,” Kathryn, who now works as a psychotherapist in Los Angeles, told The Daily Beast. “He just seems really passionate about helping people live better lives. So I really hope that will extend to the potential of him being vice president.”
The two sisters are doing well, though they have gone through some other difficult times as adults. Their mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2014. Their father passed away just months later.
For now, the Miller sisters share a sense of optimism about the future.
“The more I see him [Walz] up on that stage, I’m flashing back to how much he cared to go out of his way for others. He wasn’t just up there teaching. He really wanted to get through to students and help people understand the world,” Miller said.
“What could be more valuable than that?”
