Sinéad Aherne is a massage therapist working at Mamabear Massage in Valparaiso. She’s been employed there for a little over a month. No stranger to the inherent art in her profession, she’s worked in roles similar to the one she’s in now for...
Donald A. Girouard was raised in southern Louisiana. His family’s spread out between there and Arkansas. His father was a truck driver, so he moved from place to place as a kid. He did wind up going to high school in Alexandria, joining the United...
Kevin Wallace grew up just an hour north of Columbus in Mansfield, Ohio. His undergraduate studies were completed at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, near Warsaw. Currently, he is the fourth-grade teacher at Central Elementary School in...
Ashleigh Jett was born and raised in the small community of Lothian in Maryland. She came to Indiana after moving to Hammond around the time of her early teenage years. She graduated from Carmel High School near Indianapolis. She’s been a homemaker...
Jeffrey Hellmers used to live in Lincoln City down in Southern Indiana, hailing from the same region as Abraham Lincoln. He attended Heritage Hills High School. He was part of a play there that helped him understand his liking for working with the...
Dustin Nelson is the principal at Northview Elementary School, part of Valparaiso Community School corporation. He graduated from Portage High School in 1994, when he began carving his own path in the world of education. In December of 1998, he went...
Kasey Hoag is the owner of Six Cypress Boutique in downtown Valparaiso. She hasn’t always held that title, however, because she used to work for Ford Motor Company. Moving to the Region and then spending six months as a stay-at-home mother...
Carol Haller is a sixth-grade teacher in Valparaiso. She’s been teaching for almost 40 years at Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Her lasting effect as an educator has been felt for decades. Haller grew up in Michigan City and attended Rogers...
Richard Bender hails from a farm in Northeastern Indiana. He grew up in a region north of Fort Wayne near Auburn and attended Leo High School. His time in high school played a role in his motivation to become a teacher himself. Bender was highly...
Undergoing radiation treatments for many is a difficult test of courage. For one woman in the Region, however, her treatments brought her closer to a stranger in an unexpected manner. Shelly Sunderland was sitting next to a patient prior to their...
