WASHINGTON - Jayne Rager, whose seven-month ordeal negotiating with Mexican thugs for the freedom of her kidnapped husband attracted national attention, died May 3 at her home in Potomac, Md. She was 45.

She had complications from breast cancer, said her mother, Jane Rager.

In the years since her husband’s release in January 2008, Ms. Rager became a prominent advocate for the families and victims of perhaps Mexico’s most dangerous - and lucrative - racket: kidnapping for ransom.

She appeared on NBC’s “Today’’ show and the “Dateline’’ news program. Her book, “We Have Your Husband,’’ written with Mark Ebner, was published in 2011 and was turned into a Lifetime television movie starring Teri Polo and Esai Morales as Ms. Rager and her husband.

Ms. Rager grew up in the Washington area and spent her early career as an actress in New York and Los Angeles, appearing in commercials and soap operas. She met her future husband, Eduardo Garcia Valseca, in 1992 in the parking lot of the old Sutton Place Gourmet in Bethesda, Md. He was 18 years her senior, an art dealer, and the son of a Mexican newspaper magnate.

After their marriage in 1994, the couple lived on a 1,000-acre desert ranch near San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico, where he rode horses and she tended a cactus garden. They raised three children and helped establish a Waldorf school, a progressive school that emphasizes art and nature in its curriculum, in San Miguel.

On the morning of June 13, 2007, Ms. Rager and her husband had dropped their children at school and were returning home when they were ambushed on a dusty road.

A vehicle in front of them slammed on its brakes. A truck crashed into the back of their Jeep, pinning them. Masked bandits armed with pistols and hammers smashed the windows of their car and dragged them to the ground.