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On the second day of Camp HERO Wednesday, campers got wet from riding in a Indiana Department of Natural Resources boat, scuba diving with the local dive team and being sprayed by a Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory hose.
While having fun in and out of the water, they also learned from first responders about things like gun safety, rope rescue, CPR and more.
Scuba diving was a new activity this year to Camp HERO.
Mason Teel, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office deputy and Tippecanoe Valley High School school resource officer, explained, “We’re showing them something that a lot of kids don’t get to experience at such a young age. They’ve seen us in the past years, they’ve seen it, they’ve seen us and the agencies actually do something like this, but they’ve never actually experienced it before.”
Wednesday’s scuba diving activity gave the campers an opportunity - in a “very safe and controlled environment” - to experience it for themselves. It gave the kids, ages 8 to 13, a chance to overcome some fears or just to see what scuba diving is like.
“It is very surprising how many kids are actually willing to and how excited they were when they got done. How cool they thought it was, and it’s just an experience a lot of kids don’t get to experience,” Teel said.
The scuba diving was simplified for the campers. All they had to wear was the “BCD (buoyancy compensation device) for buoyancy, to be able to hold on to the air tank, and the regulator off the air tank and they just have just a mask. They just breathe through the air. There’s nothing complex with it. We just kept it really simple for them,” he explained.
The kids only got into the water knee deep for safety reasons. Many of the kids said they wanted to be a scuba diver after the experience. Teel said he hopes they’re able to provide the scuba diving experience for the kids at future Camp HEROs.
WWFT Fire Marshal Jeremy Williams said the fire department brought their digital fire extinguisher prop and the Save A Life trailer to teach kids the proper way to use a fire extinguisher and to get low, stay low when there’s smoke to get out of a house, respectively.
“A lot of them know the PASS (pull, aim squeeze and sweep) acronym, so it’s just a matter of going through the motions,” he said. “So far, it’s been really smooth. The Save A Life trailer, it’s the same one we take to our schools for all of our third-grade programs. So, anybody who’s been third grade or higher has been through this trailer.”
Additionally Wednesday, the fire territory had several cars out at the fairgrounds that were donated for firefighters to demonstrate extrication with the JAWS of life to the campers.
The technical rescue team demonstrated basic rope drills. Campers also got to check out a ladder truck and spray hoses. A fire department obstacle course was set up, which had the kids run through different hose drills and through tunnels. “It’s like a miniature physical agility test,” Williams said.
At 3:30 p.m., the big annual water fight started. The WWFT set up its trucks, filled with water, and all the water guns, water slides and water balloons came out.
“But that’s the end of the day. Cool the kids off. Soaking wet, cooled off, send them home,” he said.
The fire territory does community service throughout the year. Williams said they had a lot of volunteers working the camp Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but Wednesday was the actual “fire day” with the biggest presence of firefighters.
Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office organizes and hosts Camp HERO, and the WWFT has been a part of it since the first year.
“It’s a great event,” Williams stated.
KCSO Public Information Officer Sgt. Doug Light said, “This is our eighth year, so I think we have kind of our baseline of things that we want the campers to see, and so for us I think it’s more of, how can we grow camp and what can we do differently or what can we add or what can we change, because we get multi-year campers.”
The planning for Camp HERO is almost year-round, he said.
“We’ll finish camp. We’ll take a couple-week break, catch our breath and then we’ll kind of debrief, talk about what’s good, what didn’t go so well, which usually is very little,” Light said. “But we also, to be honest with you, we did a new sign-up platform that’s really worked out well. The help of AI - how you can throw some stuff into AI and it’ll create some scheduling and different things like that - has been helpful this year.”
The number of campers this year increased from around 250 in 2025 to over 300 this year. Light said it’s always been kind of a gradual increase because it comes down to the number of volunteers that Camp HERO has each year.
“But the great thing is, we have a lot of really good problems, and that is people want to come help at camp. People want to donate to camp. That’s a good problem to have. So, it’s allowed us to continue to increase,” he said.
The squad leaders at Camp HERO are the ones that really manage the kids, so in planning for next year the squad leaders will provide input on things like the number of kids per squad and if more squad leaders are needed.
“We want to keep increasing that number (of campers), and then hopefully it doesn’t come to a number, that we can just sign up and if it’s 400, it’s 400 kids. Let’s go,” Light said.
Most volunteers work for all three days, but some can only do a day or two.
“We have gained so much traction that it’s really not hard - there’s people from like Morning Optimists that come and volunteer a little bit, or other people in the community, clubs and organizations, that will come and volunteer. So, like I said, it’s a really, really good thing. It comes down to community because our donor list has just grown so much. We can increase the number but still keep the camp free, and that’s really what it’s all about,” Light said.
This is the fourth year Camp HERO has been at the Kosciusko Community Fairgrounds. He said having the camp there has allowed them to centralize it and provides for great space. They are able to utilize the lakefront and make use of different buildings.
“The fairgrounds have been great and it’s been great for us,” Light said.
Every day of camp offers the kids some type of physical challenge, educational pieces and plain fun.
“Today, fire day, they got the fire obstacle course that they’re doing, and you can see them dragging hoses and climbing up steps. Yesterday, we had the Iron Man and Iron Woman competition. Every day is a little bit of everything,” Light said. “Today they’re doing CPR, stop the bleed, so that’s an educational piece. Live Well Kosciusko did vaping yesterday, so that’s an educational piece. We just try to tie that all in together.”
As part of the graduation ceremony at Thursday’s camp, awards will be given to the Iron Man, Iron Woman and Top Shot, as well as the Sheriff’s Award and two other awards named after fallen officers. For the last three awards, squad leaders will nominate campers. Iron Man and Iron Woman are based on Wednesday’s obstacle course.
For information on the 2027 Camp HERO, a person can contact Camp Director Sgt. Justin Smith, Light or Kyle Denton. Most information is communicated through the KCSO Facebook page.
“We thank the community because we couldn’t do it without them. We thank the parents for letting us have their sons and daughters for three days, and we hope that when they go home at night that they have some great stories to tell and that we wore them out,” Light said.
