Susan Jo McConaughey. Photo courtesy of the Caspar Star-Tribune.

National Association of Social Workers member Susan Jo McConaughey of Evansville, Wyo., died March 30 from cancer, according to this obituary in the Caspar Star-Tribune Online.

McConaughey, 62, earned a nursing degree and later a master’s degree in social work from Colorado State University.

She began her career as an abuse investigator in Wyoming, established and worked in an elementary school counseling program, and began a private practice in 1998 that continued up until her death.

McConaughey also worked with the Suicide Task Force, in search and rescue, and assisted her longtime partner Dr. Keith James with his veterinary practice.

McConaughey was born in San Francisco and adopted at age two by Joseph and Dorothy McConaughey. She began searching for her birth family in the 1980s and reunited with siblings Donna Hagen, Vicki Benedict, Christine Hagen and James Hagen in 2008.