moved, too. “I looked in the mir-
ror, and I started sobbing because 
for the first time I looked sick. My 
breasts had been removed. My 
fertility was gone, my hair and eye-
brows were gone. My eyelashes were 
gone — my toenails, my fingernails 
— everything was gone. My teeth 
were destroyed and ruined.
“Everything we so often hold 
dear to us as women was gone.
”
She told her story and bared 
her soul in order to try to per-
suade her colleagues to pass a 
bill requiring health insurance 
providers to cover oral chemo-
therapy treatment, not just the 
more invasive IV treatment she 
had.
They did. 
Later, in an elevator, two 
Republicans told Steckloff that 
her testimony changed their 
votes. “That was my ‘why me?’ 
moment. I knew that I wanted 
to use my life experience to help 
make sure nobody had to do 
what I did.
“Cancer was the best thing 
that ever happened to me, and I 
don’t say that lightly.” 

GROWING UP
As a baby, little Sam really did 
inhale politics with her mother’s 
milk. 
She was born on March 
13, 1984, and within weeks, 
her mom, Vicki Barnett, was 
carrying her around while she 
waged a plucky but doomed 
valiant campaign for a hopeless-
ly Republican seat in the state 
legislature.
Barnett, a political veteran 
who eventually did get to the 
legislature and today is the 
mayor of Farmington Hills, 
gave the race her all … at least 
till she learned she was preg-
nant again with her second and 
final child. 
That baby, Jordan Steckloff, 
is today a renowned physicist at 

the Planetary Science Institute 
in Arizona. Sam, meanwhile, 
grew up running around polit-
ical and labor meetings “eating 
handfuls of Cheerios,” her mom 
remembered. Her dad is retired 
labor attorney Mark Steckloff; 
the family is still very close. 
Barnett said she knew her 
daughter had political potential 
when, as a teenager, her high 
school musical program was 
canceled because of work on 
the auditorium. “She called the 
superintendent herself and said, 
‘Would you tell the football 
team they couldn’t play if they 
were working on the field?’”
The future politician lost that 
one. 
Outwardly, she was a nor-
mal fun-loving young woman 
who somehow entered beauty 
contests (she was Miss Oakland 
County one year) and simul-
taneously participated in mar-
athon eating contests, once 
downing either 12 or 13 hot 
dogs in five minutes, depending 
on who was counting.
But, oddly enough, when she 
was in college at Purdue she 
also fell in love with … the gov-
ernment budget process. 
“I started watching nonstop 
budget committee hearings. My 
roommates would make fun of 

me!”
Afterwards, she had many 
jobs, including leading 
Birthright trips to Israel (she’s 
been four times) and work-
ing at Wayne State University 
in admissions, a job that she 
lost when she had cancer and 
missed too many days.
In the end, she beat cancer, 
though she still has to take a 
pill every day. Her hair grew 
back; no one meeting her today 
would know she had been sick.
She ran for Farmington Hills 
council in 2013 and won. Five 
years later, she met and fell in 
love with Brandon Sundheimer, 
who works in the mortgage 
industry. They were married in 
2020, the year she was elected 
to the legislature by a landslide. 
Two years later, she was reelect-
ed by a bigger landslide.
Steckloff always knew she 
wanted children. Knowing what 
cancer would do to her body, 
she prudently had several of her 
eggs frozen before chemothera-
py began. 
“I’m not eligible to adopt 
because of my cancer status, 
and surrogacy is one of the only 
options for us,” she explained.
However, Michigan is one 
of only two states (the other 
is Louisiana) where surrogacy 

contracts aren’t legal. 
“So, of course, I’m working 
on those bills (to change that),” 
she said.
There’s much more she 
wants to accomplish, in terms 
of health care and education, 
and likes few things better than 
crunching the numbers to see 
how that might work. “I’m 
excited about life every day!” 
she said.
“Every time I leave a meet-
ing I say, let me know how I 
can be of better service. I just 
want people to know if they 
need something, I am there for 
them, and if I can’t help them, 
I’ll connect them with someone 
who can.
“I really think the meaning of 
life is to make the world a better 
place.” 
 Later, I reflected that while 
important in themselves, state 
legislatures often are also 
something of a minor league 
farm system for the political 
big leagues. When it comes to 
Samantha Steckloff, I have a 
hunch that, as they used to say, 
it could be that we ain’t seen 
nothing yet. 

Jack Lessenberry has written about 

politics in Michigan and nationally for 

more than 40 years.

OUR COMMUNITY

continued from page 15

Steckloff shared her 
story of surviving 
cancer on the house 
floor, moving her col-
leagues to pass a bill 
requiring health insur-
ance providers to cover 
oral chemotherapy.

16 | SEPTEMBER 28 • 2023 
J
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