Cardinal Services clients and other community members saw planes and emergency vehicles up close Thursday at the Warsaw Municipal Airport during the SOAR! event.
During SOAR!, Airport Manager Nick King said people get to touch airplanes. There were three planes on display, as well as a jet. There were also city and county vehicles on hand.
Lake City Aviators were offering rides at a cost of $20 per ride, King said. Anyone that couldn’t get a ride due to weather was going to be rescheduled.
King said this is the third year for the event. The first year was open for Cardinal Services members. Last year, it was opened up to the general public.
Vickie Lootens, executive director for Cardinal Services, said Human Resources Manager Betsy Scott and her husband Ray, who is a line tech supervisor at the airport, came to Lootens with a vision. The first year was an event for the people Cardinal serves and Cardinal employees. There was a vision to make it a community event.
“We got such a positive response from Cardinal Services and its clients and all of the employees,” the airport decided to open up the event for the community “to have some fun, too,” King said.
“We’ve had some supporters that also supported this event because they want to keep it going. It’s a great opportunity for our Head Start program for our children we serve and their families to learn about all the different rescue transportation, rescue equipment, so it’s been such a great, great way for the community to come together to support Cardinal. We are so grateful to the airport, to (Warsaw) Mayor (Jeff) Grose for supporting this as well. And I hope it just becomes an annual event,” Lootens said, who also thanked the Warsaw Police Department, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office, Dive Rescue Team and Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory for participating in SOAR!

    Pictured (L to R) are Dan Robison, airport board member; Ray Scott, airport line tech supervisor; Tony Peterson, Cardinal Services workforce development director; Dylan Young, Leesburg Elementary School student; Nick King, airport manager; Vickie Lootens, Cardinal Services executive director; and Warsaw Mayor Jeff Grose. Photo by Jackie Gorski, Times-Union
  

The event is have people come out to the airport to see what the airport does, as well as what some of the city and county departments do on a day-to-day basis, King said.
Grose brought up Leesburg Elementary School student Dylan Young, who was mayor for the day Thursday. She hadn’t been to the Warsaw Airport before, but did state she had been to the Indianapolis airport. Thursday was her first time at Warsaw’s airport and was in one of the trucks, which is something she hadn’t done before.
“So a neat thing, for everybody,” Grose said.
Ledgeview Brewery brought out its food truck to the event and was donating a portion of its sales to Cardinal Services.
All T-shirts for sale were donated and all the money made from those sales were also going to Cardinal Services. King said they’ve raised almost $7,000 before sales Thursday just from people making donations to the event. Last year, the donation was about $1,500.
Lootens said the money raised will go directly to help sustain Cardinal’s programs and services Cardinal offers to the community.
Grose said seven months ago, he said, “we all need to be neighbors serving neighbors, cultivate the community. Nick, his staff and all the others, the different departments showing up, it’s just a great way to support Cardinal Services, which obviously, neighbors serving neighbors. It’s just a really good story, good day.”