SOUTH DEERFIELD — Ask any longtime Deerfield residents and they’ll probably say they worked with Mary Stokarski in one form or another.

Perhaps it was at the town clerk’s office, or they were paying their tax bill. Maybe they’re a member of the South Deerfield Women’s Club, or they had an emergency and she was the EMT who hopped out of the ambulance.

Regardless of where folks came across Stokarski, she met the true definition of a public servant. She spent 30 years as a justice of the peace, 25 years as an EMT, 17 years as Deerfield’s town clerk/treasurer/collector, and a lifetime working to better her Deerfield community.

Residents of the community, though, are now honoring the matriarch of the Stokarski and Wolfram families, as Mary Stokarski died at home, surrounded by family, on Oct. 31 after three years of battling ovarian cancer. She was 79.

“Everyone was always like, ‘I love going to the Town Hall when your mother is there,” recalled Sue Corey, Stokarski’s daughter. “She really loved working for the town or trying to better the community and all the people involved. … It made her so happy to see everybody.”

Stanley Stokarski, Mary’s husband and South Deerfield’s former fire chief, said his wife was driven by her love of helping the community — “she really enjoyed working with townspeople” — and she continued to battle the cancer for years. Corey added it was her mom’s second battle with cancer, as she overcame breast cancer at 45.

As the illness progressed, Stanley, as well as Corey, said the family was unsure if she would make it to her wedding anniversary, but she defied those doubts. Mary Stokarski celebrated 60 years of marriage with Stanley in June and continued to battle to the end.

“She was setting goals for herself,” Stanley Stokarski said, “and that was one of them.”

In her decades of living and working in the community, Stokarski built up a reputation of being a hard worker and an invaluable resource for the town.

Select Board member and former state trooper Blake Gilmore, whose family worked with the Stokarskis for decades, including with Deerfield Rescue, the town’s EMS service, said folks often asked for Mary Stokarski in their time of need.

“I’d be going on a call and people would be like, ‘Is Mary coming?’” Gilmore said, adding that Stokarski’s service to the community is part of what inspired him to serve. “She was very graceful in her demeanor and just a really, really fantastic person.”

While she was always working to better the town of Deerfield, Gilmore said Stokarski was a family woman at heart, who did everything she could for them.

“It’s family and then it’s community and what you can do to help the community out. That was a big thing with her,” Gilmore said. “She was one of the best friends of Deerfield.”

Even those who only worked with her for a few years said Stokarski was eager to help them out. Select Board member Trevor McDaniel said she began helping him when he was running for School Committee and then when he joined the Select Board by offering him advice and guidance on issues.

“Mary was just a really special lady. … She did so much over her time, it just blows me away that somebody could give that much to the community in all those years and in all those different roles,” McDaniel said. “She just touched so many people.”

Stokarski’s influence has also extended beyond the borders of Deerfield, as Wendy Houle, Sunderland’s town clerk who also knew Stokarski for many years, said Stokarski was a “second mom” and “a wonderful mentor that meant the world to me.”

“My heart breaks for Stash, Jini, Susie, Paul and her whole family. She loved them with all her heart as they loved her,” Houle said. “We have lost a beautiful person that gave so much of herself to all. A beautiful angel that I will continue to strive to make proud.”

Stokarski was born on May 15, 1945, to Norman and Virginia Wolfram in Greenfield and graduated from Frontier Regional School in 1963. She worked at Deerfield Plastics four different times during her career and also spent time working for the Civil Defense Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Lunt Silversmiths.

She was also a dedicated public servant, as she spent 17 years — over two stints — as Deerfield’s town clerk/treasurer/collector and on Deerfield’s Finance Committee. On top of municipal work, she also served as president of the South Deerfield Women’s Club, as a member of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church’s Finance Committee, and on the South Deerfield Fire District’s women’s auxiliary.

Not content with all of those roles, she also started the South Deerfield Fire District’s Fire Explorers group, volunteered with Baystate Franklin Medical Center’s auxiliary board and served on the Franklin County Retirement Board until the day she died.

“It’s why I hate to leave it. I love the people. They’ve been so good to me,” Mary Stokarski said in her retirement story in the Dec. 17, 2013 Greenfield Recorder. “Deerfield is very special to me.”

Those feelings were mutual, as Deerfield residents thought Stokarski was special, too.

She is survived by her husband and three children, as well as six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and countless nieces, nephews, cousins and in-laws.

Donations in Stokarski’s memory can be sent to the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, 29 Sugarloaf St., South Deerfield, MA 01373; or to the Ashfield Community Golf Course, P.O. Box 454, Ashfield, MA 01330.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.