Community matters to Rachel Kringle. It’s the reason she moved her family to Pacific more than four years ago.

It’s also the reason she started her blog – Taking Back Pacific – to restore the community’s shattered sense of togetherness and explore ways to get past the recent rise of hostility in the town that has pitted council versus mayor, coworker versus coworker and neighbor versus neighbor.

Kringle moved to Pacific for one simple reason.

“I wanted community,” Kringle, 34, said. “I lived in Federal Way and it was in a pretty tough situation where we had a shooting outside our bedroom window. I wanted something different for my family and I liked the idea of a small town.”

So Kringle, with her husband and two children, moved to Pacific seeking a place where neighbors watched out for each other and cared about the people they lived next to.

She said she found that immediately.

“From day one they’ve been great,” Kringle said. “When we were moving in we got our van stuck in the mud in the backyard. We didn’t realize, living in the valley, that the ground was always wet. So here comes (neighbor Jack French) with his floor jack to get us unstuck. “

Over the next couple of years that bond continued to strengthen.

When her husband got sick, contracting swine flu that morphed into an aspergillus fungal infection in his brain that almost killed him, Kringle said her neighbors stepped up to help.

“When my husband got sick my neighbors were amazing,” she said.

Thinking she had finally found her sense of place, Kringle said she was alarmed at her first taste of small town politics during the city’s contentious mayoral race a year ago – a race that pitted incumbent Rich Hildreth against write-in candidate Cy Sun.

“Politics have never been my deal,” Kringle said. “I was content to be kind of blind and just appreciate what the city had to offer, with wonderful people. That’s what mattered to me.”

Kringle admits that she allowed Hildreth and Sun to put campaign signs in her yard during the race, although, she added, that she didn’t vote for either of them.

When Sun won the election, she said she was shocked, but hoped he would do a good job.

“That’s a big deal to win a write-in election,” she said. “I expected that he was kind of a no-B.S. kind of guy, like he was going to do what he said he was going to do. I thought he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t take any guff off anyone.”

Kringle said it soon became apparent to her that Sun’s brusque manner and the reluctance of the council to accept him had a divisive effect on Pacific’s residents.

“I felt it, it’s the weirdest thing,” she said. “This town is normally a happy place, with busy people going around all day long. You see them coming in and out of City hall and going to the post office. You’d see neighbors talking and things like that. Then the feeling became different. You didn’t see people out like they used to be. Even the senior center was different. It was normally so busy, then it became desolate and sad. I felt sad and that people where suffering and that’s what made me decide to do something to help.”

Appalled by the political infighting that developed after Sun assumed his mayoral post, Kringle said her first inclination was to use her blog – Taking Back Pacific – to weigh in on the politics in Pacific.

She soon found out, however, that it wasn’t a good fit for her.

“When this blog first began, I had little education about the history of the town I call home,” Kringle recently posted. “I must say that in the past few weeks, that has significantly changed. I have grown as a person, and the lessons I have learned in this very short period of time are ones I won’t quickly forget. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some incredible people. I was reminded why politics isn’t my calling. Most importantly, I was able to figure out where my efforts will be most effective. I believe we all play important roles, but if your role is one you can put your heart into, the possibilities are endless, and the work seems almost effortless.”

Now Taking Back Pacific has a new focus – building community, and restoring a sense of togetherness that Kringle feels has been lost in the glare of the city government’s well publicized woes.

“I just want to see community,” she said. “My main focus in all this is for the people, the citizens and the community. This is where I need to focus my attention. I’m taking a new role in building community.”

In the end, Kringle said she hopes her blog will help to reunite a divided community and restore what attracted her to Pacific in the first place.

“Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to get things done,” Kringle said. “Maybe we needed a catastrophe to pull us together.”