Rachael Savage is no stranger to transformation.

Rachael was born in Tacoma and raised by her single mother, Linda, her grandmother, five strong aunts and her grandfather Ray. Her family experienced the American dream of coming to the West Coast from the Dust Bowl conditions of the 30’s and rising from field work to working class stability and home ownership in the postwar period of prosperity. Rachael witnessed first hand what was possible in the United States and in Washington state.

From her Grandmother and her aunts she learned to value hard work, beauty and making and creating. From her mother, a child of the 60’s and 70’s, she learned independence of thought and action. From her Grandfather she developed an interest in the events and the importance of civic awareness and a citizens responsibilities.

The stability and love of this hard working extended family environment was a strong antidote to the difficulty and tragedy Rachael would experience from a young age.

Rachaels birth father experienced the onset of schizophrenia at 19 just before she was born. He was hospitalized and remained in a hospital setting with no contact with Rachael or her mother. Because of the commitment laws and facilities available at the time she had the benefit of knowing she was safe from her father acting on his schizophrenia towards anyone in her family and that he was receiving compassionate care in an asylum.

Addiction was present in her extended family and she would witness the devastating consequences to families and to the addicts.

Rachael would lose her step father, Steve Savage, whom she considered her father and loved dearly and still carries his name. He died very young of a brain tumor. After the untimely death of her step father, Rachael dealt with the grief by turning to drugs and alcohol. She became addicted, not only to alcohol and cannabis, but to methamphetamine. Rachael found herself down to 89 pounds and near death at age 19. Remembering the suffering she saw caused by addiction she decided she wanted to live and sought recovery.

She began getting honest about her addiction and being open to radical mindset change by practicing recovery in the rough and tumble, everyone is welcome environment, of Tacoma AA. At twenty years old Rachael renounced alcohol and drugs and committed to abstinence. She became a part of the thriving twelve step community learning the principles of honesty, integrity, compassion and service. The humble groups of alcoholics and addicts taught her how to live in a new way and how to rejoin society. By staying committed to her daily recovery practice, Rachael has maintained continuous abstinence since 1990.

In the early 90’s Rachael lived on Capitol Hill and worked in downtown Seattle for Gene Juarez Salons both in the Nordstrom Salon and teaching at the Advanced Training Academy on 5h Avenue. At that time downtown Seattle was vibrant and bustling. Business was booming. Fantastic restaurants from little hole in the walls to historic places in the Pike Place market, boutiques and beautiful retailers such as Nordstrom and Fredrick & Nelson stood proudly. This wonderful time to live and work in the city has been a reference point for her ever since.

In 1993 after getting married and starting a successful family business with her husband, she reluctantly moved from Seattle. Rachael would become mother to two boys while living in the suburbs of Bellevue. In 1995 Rachael became a serious meditation practitioner. Her meditation practice led her to study and learn the ancient meditation and wisdom techniques of the earliest teachings of the Buddha. Learning the principles of compassion, kindness, forgiveness and equanimity inspired her to begin teach these practices to others.

By 1998, living in Bellevue, she missed the city dearly. Inspired by her love for the city, and her meditation practice she bought the shop, The Vajra on Capitol Hill. The shop offered supplies to people who were interested in finding practicesthat could help them find peace and meaning, including meditation, and was a hub of the community of independent thinkers and artists in Seattle’s most vital neighborhood. Although she still had two small children, her plan was to run the shop with employees while raising her toddlers and be at the shop more and more herself when her boys went to school. She loved even her limited time in the city. She always had the plan to move back as soon as she could. Once the kids were out of school.

So much for plans! As the wave of childhood diagnosis of children with ADD began to rise, she found herself with a very active little boy who was a prime target for school mandated medication. Rather than put her child on drugs, Rachael made the decision to homeschool, which meant leaving her dream of her shop in the city, passing it to her mother and moving to Duvall to raise and homeschool her boys.

In 2012, tragedy and challenge struck again. In the form of divorce and her mother’s diagnosis with cancer. Experiencing another call for transformation, Rachael responded by moving back to Seattle, to the city and neighborhood she loved, taking over the shop while caring for her mother and rebuilding her life. Stepping into a business that had been suffering from the effects of years of major apartment construction on the block and the after effects of the 2008 financial crash, Rachael had her work cut out for her. She dove in and changed the store from struggling to successful. Employing four people and revitalizing what is now one of the oldest remaining independent businesses on Broadway.

In 2014, after twenty years of dedicated meditation practice and training Rachael decided to create a meditation society that was able to offer people a way to find happiness and meaning and a structure that would help the society to not be torn apart by politics. She had also found others who were working to integrate mindfulness meditation into stand alone mutual aid recovery groups. She would be a leader in this movement helping to run a worldwide recovery program and would go on to develop and found a unique meditation based addiction recovery society.

In 2016 Rebel Saints Meditation Society, a place to learn meditation and recover from addiction opened in Capitol Hill. Everyone was welcome regardless of religious or political beliefs. A dedicated space just a block away from Cal Anderson Park made famous in 2020 as the site of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. For eight years Rebel Saints offered meditation classes, retreats and hosted meditation based addiction recovery meetings. After holding on to the meditation society through the COVID lockdown, Rebel Saints would be forced to close the Capitol Hill space due to the highly dangerous street conditions that continued unabated after the city re-opened. Rachael continues to lead Rebel Saints online and the meditation based addiction recovery society is accessible to recovering addicts from all over the world.

After witnessing the destructive street conditions on Broadway Rachael became a member of the Broadway Business Improvement Association and is currently working with other business owners and employees to try to find common sense solutions.

Not a politician, Rachael is uniquely qualified for the role of Mayor at this dire time when the city needs leadership based on straight talk and honesty. Rachael possesses the practical common sense and the will to work with all concerned to get projects done that is critical to success as a business owner and entrepreneur. Her decades of experience working with addicts, both on an individual basis and in the process of building new and innovative recovery methods, can help the city find its way in the middle of the unprecedented addiction epidemic. One of the primary ways that she ended her personal addiction was by understanding the power of service to others. Her run for mayor comes from a desire to be of service to her city. To help solve the fentanyl and severe mental illness epidemic once and for all and to finally fulfill the promise of Seattle as a world class city.