Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
While her job title may be Indiana Army National Guard recruiter, SSG Lani Hailey sees herself more as a mentor.
“I don’t like to call myself a recruiter. I like to call myself as like a mentor more than anything because even if kids don’t want to join but they don’t know who to ask on how to apply for college or how to get into a trade school or what(ever), I’ll help them with that,” she stated in an interview Monday at the National Guard Armory, 315 CR 350N, Warsaw.
Hailey, 32, was born and raised in Northeastern Oklahoma on an Indian reservation as a member of the Quapaw Tribe. During her junior year in high school, she moved to Kansas City and decided to join the National Guard in 2010 at the age of 17 to help her finish paying for her education.
She enlisted into the Kansas Guard in 2010. In 2015, she transferred to the Ohio Guard where she met her husband, Doug Homan. In 2016, Hailey started getting homesick so they moved to Oklahoma where she continued her service in the Guard there. In 2018, they moved to Indiana for her husband’s job and she’s been serving in the Indiana Guard since 2020. From 2018 to 2020, she still drilled in the Oklahoma Guard despite the long distance.
Hailey became a recruiter in January 2022, after serving as a truck driver in the Guard.
“Before I was AGR, I was on mission for almost two full years as Title X finance. Before that, I was a bartender for a long time,” she recalled. “But I have three small kids so I just had to find jobs to work around their schedule at the time because I didn’t want to pay for childcare.”
Growing up, Hailey’s dad was a firefighter/paramedic and worked 72 hours on and then be off for four days. Her family, however, also owned a meat-processing plant so on his off days, her dad would still be working.
He also worked for FEMA during Hurricanes Harvey and Katrina and the Joplin tornado.
“So my dad got to give so much to the community as a firefighter and I just knew, at that age I didn’t know how to get to there other than the National Guard recruiter had talked to me,” she said. “It was really cool to hear that the Guard also went to Hurricane Katrina, so that was kind of what led me to the Guard.”
Her mom was a teacher, so Hailey had parents who mentored or were part of their community.
“So that’s kind of what led me to recruiting was that I just wanted to kind of give the same that I had in my life growing up,” Hailey said.
“I see it as an opportunity to change someone’s life. Or maybe if they’re in a bad situation at home and need to get out, or they don’t have a sense of family and we can provide that, or they just want to give back to the community like I did.”
Before becoming the recruiter for the Kosciusko County area, Hailey served as a recruiter for NorthWood and Northridge since 2022. Her first official day as the Warsaw, Wawasee and Tippecanoe Valley recruiter was June 1, 2025.
“We live in Nappanee so our go-to Walmart is in Warsaw. So we’re pretty familiar with the area,” she said.
This summer, people can expect to see Hailey at the fair. Her base goal for the summer is just to be in the community.
She also has a Facebook page and an Instagram handle at The_little_sarg, chosen because she’s only 4 foot, 10 inches tall.
Hailey does a lot of things with the Boys & Girls Club in Nappanee, and they’re putting her in contact with the local YMCA so if there are kids who want to chat with her, she’ll be able to make herself available.
Once the school year restarts, Hailey said every Tuesday for the whole school year she’ll be in the lunch room at Wawasee. She’s waiting on word from Warsaw and Tippecanoe Valley.
Asked why someone should consider joining the National Guard, she responded, “It’s different for everybody, so I always ask them, ‘What’s your why? What’s your want? What do you want in the future?’ And if it’s college, we talk about college. And sometimes I’ll just tell them why I joined. I joined to do something bigger than me, to have a sense of family and change lives for other people.”
One of the things that has benefitted Hailey in her career is being a mom to a 12-year-old boy in the seventh grade at NorthWood, a 10-year-old daughter in fifth grade and a 7-year-old daughter in second grade.
“I think that’s really benefitted me in my recruiting. I treat all my enlistments like I would my own kids. ... I expect the same from them as I do my children, so they better be at school, they better have their grades up and they better be respectful when I’m not around. So that’s really benefitted my recruiting endeavors, is that I see them as my own,” she stated.
Hailey has 24 current enlistments.
To contact Hailey to be her next potential enlistment, call 574-404-1406 or email [email protected]
