Mariska Hargitay is a really, really good egg. Not only has she been delighting us as Captain Olivia Benson for 25 years on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, she’s spent that tenure bringing her work home with her in the most productive and impactful way possible. Moved by fans recounting their rape survival stories to her, Mariska established the Joyful Heart Foundation, through which she launched the End the Backlog initiative that discovered hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits in police stations across the country. In working to reform rape kit usage, Mariska met prosecutor Kym Worthy. In fact, Mariska helped secure the funding necessary to test 11,000 kits Kym had found in a Michigan evidence room, which led to solving thousands of sex crimes in that state alone. Dateline host Andrea Canning just appeared on the Today show to tout the latest Dateline podcast that focuses on Kym and Mariska’s work:
Mariska Hargitay hasn’t reserved her impressive detective skills for the TV screen — she also solves some cases in real life too.
Recently, Dateline NBC’s Andrea Canning joined the Today show to discuss the newest episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly and revealed that Hargitay, 60, helped one Michigan prosecutor with thousands of sexual assault cases.
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star funded prosecutor Kym Worthy on her path to solving thousands of cases. Worthy first discovered that over 11,000 untested rape kits were sitting on a shelf in an evidence room. She took matters into her own hands and worked to get all of them tested.
However, money was needed to get all of these kits tested, and as Canning said, “So, who stepped in? None other than Law and Order’s Mariska Hargitay.”
Canning, 51, explained that the actress “helped them raise the money to get this done.” As a result, thousands of cases were solved and they discovered 22 serial rapists.
The Dateline broadcaster also noted that Worthy and Hargitay’s work is “having a ripple effect across the country [and] is making changes everywhere — for police departments and for prosecutors’ offices.”
This isn’t Hargitay’s first time assisting real law enforcement. Earlier this year, in April, while filming one of the final episodes of season 25 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, she was approached by a little girl who believed her to be a real police officer based on the badge she wore as part of her character’s outfit.
At the time, a witness told PEOPLE that the little girl had been separated from her mother in the Anne Loftus Playground in Fort Tryon Park and asked the actress for help. Hargitay obliged and then halted production for 20 minutes to help the child locate her mother and to console them both.
The witness noted that the young girl was both oblivious to the film crew and Hargitay’s scene partner, Ice-T.
Everytime we get to cover Mariska Hargitay it is such a tonic. Her goodness is so authentic! There’s no inflated ego, or sense that she’s doing this for her own PR. By her own account, she felt like her acting job opened a door to work she had no prior intention of pursuing, but could not turn away from once it entered her life. She’s previously described it as “I didn’t take this job on SVU to do this work. But I think I was meant to do this.” The older I get the more I see that as an art in itself: to be able to embrace a path that takes you by surprise. I’m also now really hoping that we see Mariska at the convention next week. She’s such a strong advocate for the biggest issues at stake in this election: women’s rights and reproductive rights. You know, normal things.
photos credit: IMAGO/MediaPunch / Avalon and via Instagram