Cassie Reedy is a speech-language pathologist living and working in the Region. She’s been doing what she does for about 16 years. Believe it or not, when she started college, her interests were elsewhere, and the field she’s in now wasn’t one she originally dreamed of stepping into.
“I was a business major. I took a career-development class, and one of our first assignments was a personality quiz. Speech-language pathologist was my number-one match. My best friend’s mom was a speech therapist in the schools, so that spring break, I shadowed her and thought, ‘I can do this. I think I would enjoy this,’” she said.
Reedy works with an organization called Jacob’s Ladder, a not-for-profit outpatient rehabilitation facility for children with special needs that serves seven counties across Northwest Indiana. She mainly visits homes throughout Porter County, mostly in her hometown of Valparaiso and Chesterton.
Reedy is associated with Indiana’s First Steps program. Its mission is simple: make sure families’ infants and toddlers receive whatever assistance is needed now in order to have a better future. Eligible children are usually aged between 1 and 3 years old, and Reedy goes to wherever they are to provide support by any means possible. In that way, her car can be seen as a Batmobile of sorts, with her traveling around the area to do good for the sake of struggling adults and children alike.
“I love helping the kids, just as I love working with the parents so they can help their child succeed. What I do can sometimes become difficult, but you just have to remember that these are toddlers. Sometimes, they just don't understand, and their parents are also dealing with a lot. It can often get to be emotionally stressful for me, the child, and the parents, but we have to work through it together. Even if a session goes a little haywire, we're able to get it back on track,” she said.
The kids themselves are the very reason Reedy tolerates what she can. She understands that everything is for them at the end of the day, so it’s easy to say she’s taken a life of service upon herself. Each child she winds up assisting has loads of untapped potential within them; her job is to bring all of it to the surface.
Reedy has kids of her own. Being a mom in a world as fast-paced as today’s is no straightforward task. A work-life balance, in that case, can be tricky to get a good grip on. However, she’s been granted ample flexibility over the years to give enough weight to each side, making the scale even time after time.
“I am very lucky that I make my own schedule. I can be very flexible with my schedule and work it around. There’s plenty of room for my personal life, appointments, and just the things I want to do with my kids. The older I get, the easier it is to find balance,” she said.
An avid reader, Reedy adores the “Harry Potter” books. While she and her family strive to do more camping, they usually end up doing what leans more toward glamping. Nevertheless, fun is always being had. She and her daughters also volunteer together for Hannah’s Hope, a non-profit with the main focus of providing developmental equipment to local children with disabilities.
When the question of what makes Valpo stick out arises, community is the keyword for Reedy. Located in the spot it is, the town presents many opportunities for its residents to thrive amongst one another, instead of their being isolated.
“It’s always just been the sense of community you get. I’m still friends with the people I grew up with, and I love that. Valpo is a very involved community, so there are so many ways of being involved with different things all over,” she said.