In the early afternoon of April 3, 1996, Vickie Woosley found herself planted outside a small log cabin on the outskirts of Lincoln, Montana.
No, Woosley wasn't visiting Big Sky Country for the beautiful mountain scenery or the fresh air, but for matters far more pressing.
As a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Woosley was there to aid in the arrest of Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the 'Unabomber,' after a national manhunt spanning 17 years.
Woosley, who'd spent months fielding calls to the bureau's Unabomber tipline, remembers the long-awaited day vividly.
"I remember a lot, though I was pretty much just grateful that we were able to capture him and put an end to the terror," she said. "This was somebody who had a long history of committing horrible crimes - building bombs and sending them to people in the mail. And so I just felt really relieved that we were able to capture him."
After Kaczynski's arrest, Woosley spent over a decade getting plugged into a number of different locales as an undercover narcotics agent.
These days, however, business trips look a bit different.
Inside her office at Centennial Sportsplex, Woosley - now serving as team psychologist for the Nashville Predators - smiled and joked:
"A fight may break out on the ice. But I'm usually not involved."
Though she may not get in on the game action, Woosley's contributions to the Preds are just as important.
Whether it's by way of a casual chat or a closed-door conversation, Woosley personally ensures that the men in Gold and Navy are mentally prepared for the stresses of an intensely high-pressure and high-performance job.
"As I tell the players, if the six and a half inches between your ears is not OK, the rest doesn't matter," she said.
Though she couldn't have known it at the time, Woosley's career in the FBI would parallel her work with the Preds in many ways.
In her final years with the Bureau, Woosley worked in a unit conducting psychological evaluations - or, "a check up from the neck up" - on agents working in covert operations.
"I think that it taught me a lot about team building, taught me a lot about high performance and performing under pressure, which of course is a primary goal of these guys," Woosley said. "They have to perform at a very high level but under a great deal of pressure."
So, how does one go from a 21-year-long career in the FBI to the Nashville Predators?
Like the Bureau, Woosley never aspired to work for a hockey team, much less an NHL club.
"Being from the deep south, we didn't have a lot of ice," the Baton Rouge native laughed.
But Woosley - having completed an internship at the Vanderbilt University Department of Veterans Affairs Consortium - knew Nashville well, and in 2006 returned to the Music City to join Vanderbilt Athletics as a sport psychologist.
Years later, as the world came to a grinding halt in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Preds came calling.
"I thought it sounded like a great new opportunity and a challenge," Woosley said. "It was a hard time for everyone, but I think in my world, it provided me with some great time to be able to sit with the guys and just talk about anything."
Woosley joined the team and used the tightened COVID-19 protocols to bond with the team and establish relationships during an uncertain time.
"It really gave me sort of a captive audience, in that we were all together," Woosley said. "When we were on the road, we ate our meals together. And so it gave me a great opportunity to really spend some time with the guys and for them to get used to having me around."
Though Woosley has since established relationships with countless Preds players, few have publicly advocated for her work quite as much as now-retired defenseman Mark Borowiecki.
"I think she's become so much more than just a professional resource for many, if not all of us," he said. "Obviously in a professional capacity she's always there for us to try to dial in our performance with tips and tricks… But I think her role has also expanded into being one of our first contacts in times of need in our personal lives too."
During his first season with the Predators, Borowiecki grappled with injury and "periods of dark, obsessive thoughts," and ultimately turned to Woosley for guidance.
The help she offered, according to the veteran blueliner, was life-changing.
"I sort of underestimated the stresses and difficulties of moving my family and my young son during COVID and coming to a new team that I'd never played for before," Borowiecki said. "I just kind of shrugged it all off, assuming that it would go exactly as planned. And when it didn't go exactly as planned, I had no plan to deal with it. I think that's where Vickie was able to step in and really help center me and give me some of those tools and tactics and be a resource for me trying to get things back on track."
The next year, Borowiecki iced what he still considers the best season of his career.
"Maybe not statistically, but in terms of my value to the team that I was playing on, I think it was probably one of my top seasons in the NHL," Borowiecki said. "And I credit a lot of that with the lessons and the resources that Vickie gave me."
The post, Woosley said, went a great distance in destigmatizing her work in an industry sooner associated with fist fights and missing teeth than mental health or mindfulness.
"I think people can read that and, first of all, feel like they're not alone," she said. "When you're feeling those things, you may be hesitant to talk about it because you think, 'Am I the only one that feels this way?' And when you read it from other pro athletes, there's a part of that that's very healing for those people and very encouraging."
Unlike the Bureau, these days Woosley can only speak with people willing to take the first step themselves. But things like Borowiecki's post - or encouragement from locker room leadership - help make that step less daunting.
"Maybe our captain or our leadership group will see a young guy struggling, and they may be the ones to say, 'Why don't you go talk to Vickie?'" Woosley said. "That's a much better intro than me chasing after a player… And I also think it helps that the equipment staff, the travel staff, the training guys all know me. Any of them that come in contact with a player can be the ones that say, 'Why don't you go talk to Vickie?'"
Anyone who does is sure to be met with an immeasurable warmth and kindness.
"She cares about our mental health, and not just from an athletic standpoint, but also from a human standpoint," Borowiecki said. "My impression has always been that she believes in treating and caring for people from a whole human perspective. And having her around daily has made that so much better."
