Pamela Atkinson, a tireless advocate and organizer for Utahns who needed help — children, the elderly and people dealing with poverty — has died.

Atkinson died Saturday, according to Fox 13 News. She was 94.

Over her long career speaking out for people in need, Atkinson was often called — by former Gov. Gary Herbert, among others — “Utah’s Mother Teresa,” referring to the Catholic nun who ministered to the poor in Kolkata, India. It’s a comparison Atkinson once said embarrassed her.

“I don’t feel like a Mother Teresa,” Atkinson told a Salt Lake Tribune reporter in 2001. “I feel like I’m just an ordinary person who’s gotten some things done.”

Atkinson — who in her career advised governors and mayors, and consulted with clergy across faiths — had three passions, she said: children, or “little ones,” as she called them; education; and helping people experiencing homelessness and poverty.

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson posted a remembrance on X Saturday, saying that “Pamela has been an example to me of loving your neighbor unconditionally. Our state is in a better place because of her influence for good.”

In 2001, just before she retired from her position as vice president of mission services for Intermountain Healthcare, Atkinson said that when she was in her 20s, a group of her school friends were talking about their various talents, from singing to crochet. When it was her turn to speak, Atkinson said she stayed silent — and another young woman said, “Pamela doesn’t have any talents.” The comment stayed with her many decades, and many accolades, later.

When author Sue Bender met Atkinson at a dinner party and was told of her work for people living in poverty, Bender blurted out, “Pamela, you are an artist!” Bender recounted this moment in her 2001 book, “Stretching Lessons,” which Bender, who died in 2025, said Atkinson inspired.

“I realized that Pamela sees the dignity in her homeless friends,” Bender told The Tribune shortly after the book was published. “Her art is her caring.”

One of her motivators, Atkinson said, was anger. What made her angry? “Injustice. When people are not treated fairly. Abuse,” she said. “If I’m angry about something, I darn well better do something about it.”

London and poverty

Atkinson was born Pamela Collin in the London borough of Bromley, the third of five children. She knew poverty firsthand in her youth. Her father was a gambler who owned greyhounds for racing. He once sold the dogs and lost the family’s money, then left for good.

Her mother held menial jobs, but had no career skills, she said. She and her siblings survived on bread and potatoes, using newspapers as toilet paper. The kids slept three to a bed, with mice running around the house.

“It’s very hard going to school with people knowing you’re so poor,” she said in 2001, adding that she never invited friends home because “our house was horrible.”

After finishing high school — she was the only one of her siblings to do so — she traveled the globe, and spent a year as an exchange student in New York. She landed in the Bay Area, attending night classes at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco in the 1960s. She worked as a nurse to support herself, using credentials she earned at a London hospital.

She married and raised three children. She divorced, but remained on good terms with her ex-husband, she said.

She arrived in Utah in 1966 — and while she sometimes went back to England, she declared emphatically that “[Utah] is my home.”

A career of helping others

As an administrator at Salt Lake City’s LDS Hospital in the 1980s, one of Atkinson’s initiatives was holding a “teddy bear clinic,” to help children overcome their fear of seeing the doctor. She also helped organize mock disaster drills for doctors and paramedics.

Atkinson took on several positions at LDS Hospital’s parent company, Intermountain Healthcare, including director of its senior services, rehabilitation services and medically needy services. In 1990, she was promoted to vice president of mission services — a job created specifically for her.

The job, Intermountain’s senior vice president, Steven D. Kohlert, said at the time, was designed “to coordinate more effectively all of [Intermountain’s] charitable programs for the needy, the aging and the homeless.” Atkinson was “the ideal person” for the job, Kohlert said, “because of her long and active involvement with such programs.”

During her time at Intermountain Healthcare, Atkinson also was the only person to serve simultaneously on Utah’s three educational boards: the state school board, the higher education Board of Regents and the board of the Utah College of Applied Technology.

In 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Atkinson was one of the Utah civic leaders to take part in the “Alliance for Unity,” formed by billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr. and then-Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. The group, in its formation statement, set a goal “to help people cross boundaries of culture, religion and ethnicity to better understand and befriend one another.”

The Salt Lake Tribune named Atkinson “Utahn of the Year” in 2005.

In 2019, Salt Lake City’s Housing Authority broke ground on Pamela’s Place Apartments, a 100-bed facility on the western edge of downtown, devoted to permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. Three years later, a homeless resource center in South Salt Lake was named for Atkinson. The Fourth Street Clinic near Pioneer Park also bears her name.

Her name also appears on the Pamela Atkinson Trust Fund, a state fund that pays for emergency services, housing and other support for people in need. Utah residents are given the opportunity to contribute to the fund on their state income tax returns, or when rounding up their purchases at state liquor stores.

When such honors were given to her, Atkinson often deflected the praise. At the groundbreaking for Pamela’s Place, she said, “Today belongs to the building, and what it is going to do for a hundred of our homeless friends who are going to take those steps out of homelessness right here.”

Information on Atkinson’s survivors was not immediately available. Memorial services are pending.

This is a developing story and will be updated.