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Margaret Louise Devany Burns wasn't interested in solving the problems of individuals.

She wanted people to solve their own problems.

Her mission was empowering them with the emotional, practical and educational tools they needed to bring about change.

"She was always looking at the big picture," said Mary Jo Stouffer, who worked with Burns to set up a Just Coffee distributorship through their church.

The coffee cooperative appealed to Burns because it provides farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, with a way to support their families without leaving their homes and illegally crossing the U.S. border to find work.

"It was a positive thing to do about immigration," Stouffer said.

Burns took the same positive steps to reduce recidivism of prison inmates through a victim-offender mediation program, curtail teen violence by teaching conflict-resolution skills and improve the lives of impoverished children by educating homeless mothers.

Her calendar was brimming with volunteer activities when Burns died unexpectedly July 27 from a respiratory ailment after abdominal surgery. She was 69.

Burns, who earned a dual bachelor's degree in psychology and philosophy, master's degrees in nursing and public health, and a doctorate in education, was born in New York City. After she graduated from the Westchester School of Nursing in 1959, she began working in an emergency room.

"She never flinched at how hard a job was," said her husband, Richard Burns. "She thought very clearly under pressure."

She met her future husband while visiting her sister and newborn niece in Mississippi at the Air Force base where Richard was stationed. He was assigned to escort her around the base.

They kept in touch and dated on and off for a few years. Richard was a happy bachelor, and both he and Margaret were busy with their careers. They reconnected after he moved to Ohio to attend graduate school and Margaret stopped for a visit on her way to New York.

"We had a really nice time," he said.

More than nice. Richard was smitten, and he couldn't stop thinking about Margaret after she left. During a break from a special training in Chicago, Richard drove to New York and proposed.

Margaret Burns moved around the country with her husband during his Air Force career. She worked as a nurse and a nursing instructor, earned her advanced degrees and took on volunteer projects in every community they called home.

While raising her two sons — Christopher, a police officer in Colorado and Iraq war veteran; and Kevin, who just completed medical school in Tennessee after serving in the Peace Corps in Nepal — Burns attended school, taught nursing and got involved in social issues.

She volunteered to work with mentally ill adults, wrote a book on pulmonary care, worked with a community health program on child abuse prevention and implemented a Great Books program at a prison in Tennessee. There, she also established a violence-prevention program, a victim-offender reconciliation program, a scholarship program for death-row inmates and a plan to diminish the near-constant ambient noise in the prison, to reduce the stress on inmates.

Burns taught her sons "the lessons of community involvement and making your community a better place," Kevin Burns said. "She's always been involved in different social justice projects."

When her husband retired in 1997, Margaret decided it was his turn to follow her. On a two-week trip to the Navajo Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona where Burns taught medical clinic staffers and patients about diabetes prevention, she decided they should move to the state.

The couple started off in Flagstaff, where Margaret pursued a master's degree in public health. When they realized the high altitude was aggravating a respiratory condition Margaret had, they moved to Tucson and she completed her degree at the University of Arizona in 2001.

In Tucson, Burns became involved in local social issues, including the Just Coffee co-op.

"She taught us a lot," Stouffer said. "She's always been pushing everybody to go a little farther."

Once the farmers were paid for their coffee, other members of the distributorship wanted to give their profits to the farmers, too. Burns insisted the profits go to a community clinic in Mexico.

"She led us into donating that to Partners in Health in Chiapas. She led us farther down the path, and now we know about the medical needs of the world," Stouffer said. "It was her universality that was her striking feature. It wasn't just giving a meal to somebody. It was changing the entire system."

Burns also coordinated The Health Education Project, which recruited volunteers to teach life skills and health classes to adults and teens in need.

"She was very passionate about that," said Gay Evans, director of the project.

Work with The Health Education Project took Burns into the juvenile justice system. She taught teenage detainees to resolve conflicts without violence, gave them strategies to cope with adversity and taught them ways to overcome the difficulties in their lives.

The staff at the Pima County Juvenile Court Center found Burns personable, and the youths sought her approval.

"She was very encouraging and energetic," said Van Covington, detention supervisor at the center, 2225 E. Ajo Way.

"She was fun, nice; she listened to them, which is very important when you're dealing with teenagers. She was respectful to the detainees, to the staff, everybody."

Monsignor Robert Fuller, of St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church, where Burns and her husband attended Mass, found in Margaret a rare perspective.

"She's one of the few people in the course of my life that I have known to have a world vision," he said. "Most of us seem to be confined to our immediate environment. Maybe we expand a little beyond that, but she seemed to have a interest in the whole world."