Prior to the publication of the results of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, policymakers and academics theorized about why people declare bankruptcy. They didn’t really know why, because no one had ever done any serious empirical research on the subject. In 1981, a group of researchers decided they wanted to parse out the truth about who was filing for bankruptcy and why, so they embarked on a years’ long investigation of actual bankruptcy filings, starting with five federal judicial districts, one of which was the Illinois Northern District Court.

In those days records were not available online, so the researchers had to travel to courthouses and photocopy the records. They also interviewed local judges, lawyers, and debtors. The price courthouses charged for the photocopies was considerable, and these researchers were frugal. They determined it was cheaper for them to buy their own copy machine and fly it with them across the country than pay the courthouses, so that’s what they did. They called the copier R2D2.

The researchers brought R2D2 with them to Rockford’s old federal courthouse and copied the bankruptcy records of hundreds of northern Illinois residents. These records, together with those from the other four districts, comprised the initial dataset for the Consumer Bankruptcy Project I, a study whose findings contradicted the narrative promoted by the banks and the credit card industry, that the increased number of bankruptcies was due to irresponsible borrowers and declining stigma. What the researchers actually found was that bankruptcies generally resulted from the increased financial distress caused by life-changing circumstances like illness, job loss, and divorce.

I know all this because one of those researchers told me back in April when I saw her at a dinner in Iowa. Her name is Senator Elizabeth Warren and she’s running for the Democratic nomination for president. As soon as she heard me say I was from Rockford, she said, “Ah, Rockford! I traveled to Rockford for some of my first bankruptcy research!”

In 1981, 32 year-old University of Texas Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren flew to O’Hare airport, loaded that copy machine in a rental car, and drove out to the Illinois Northern District Court in Rockford, just to find out the truth about what was really going on, why so many of Rockford’s working families were being driven to bankruptcy.

We’re nine months away from Illinois’ March primary, and with a field of 24 Democratic presidential candidates, we might see a few swing through Rockford. But there’s one candidate who’s been here before, one who was so hungry for the truth about what was ailing northern Illinois families, that she went to the source, gathered the facts, and challenged the status quo thinking with her findings. All of northern Illinois needs to know that.

Warren hasn’t yet planned a return trip to Rockford, but you can see her in action Wednesday on the MSNBC/Telemundo debate, or drive to Chicago Friday evening where she’ll be holding a town hall at the Roosevelt University Auditorium Theater. RSVP required here: bit.ly/WARREN-CHICAGO

Elizabeth Lindquist is a Roscoe Township trustee.