RK Thompson names 2018 top finalists

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

When it comes to doing the best with what they have, two Van Wert County seniors, Dalton Heppeard and Celina Sweet, stood out from an inspiring group of 10 finalists during Wednesday’s R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance Award banquet.

Heppeard, already an entrepreneur while in school, as well as a real estate intern at Bee Gee Realty & Auctioneers, and Sweet, who has been living on her own the past two years while in school, were the top finalists in the 48th edition of the annual program started by the late Roger Thompson Jr. to honor his father, another Roger Thompson.

Other girl finalists included Chloe Brake, Hayley Kuhlman, Marissa Miller, and Paige Motycka, while the other four boy finalists were Josh England, Jacoby Kelly, Nathan O’Neill, and Trevor Spridgeon.

Emcee Bill Clifton first explained the rationale behind the R.K. Thompson Award, which honors seniors who show self-reliance in their daily lives, even though having to overcome a number of challenges to do so, before Van Wert Service Club members Kimberly Laudick and Mark Schumm introduced the finalists.

The two top finalists each had resumes that showed they were believers in self-reliance.

Sweet, a senior at Crestview High School, is a member of the National Honor Society and performs with the school’s Knight Vision show choir. She also tutors other students and volunteers with the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army. When she is not in school she works at El Mexicana restaurant and Arby’s restaurant, where she is a shift manager, to support herself.

“Being self-reliant isn’t just about supporting yourself, it is about taking the actions necessary to ensure that you have a good future and to surround yourself with the people who you care about,” Sweet noted in her application.

Sweet starts her days at 4:30 a.m. managing a shift at Arby’s before heading off to school at Crestview. After school, she either is practicing with Knight Vision or tutoring students until 6 p.m., when she returns to Arby’s and works until 8 p.m. Although family problems led her to move out of the house, Sweet says her mother is still a strong influence on her, even though she doesn’t live with her, noting that her mother has gone through a lot herself.

Despite her grueling schedule, Sweet maintains a 3.7 grade point average and plans to attend The Ohio State University majoring in nursing, with a minor in Spanish, after graduation.

Heppeard, a senior at Van Wert High School, says self-reliance, to him, is “living a few years of your life doing the things that most people won’t, so you can live the rest of your life doing what most people can’t, no matter what the cost.”

As a sophomore, Heppeard started selling baked goods, but a setback occurred later when a fire destroyed the barn where he kept all his supplies. In addition to school, Heppeard works up to 25 hours a week at Lowe’s in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is now working on an internship with Bee Gee Realty & Auctioneers through VWHS’s Career Education Opportunity (CEO) program, and hopes to make a career in real estate when he graduates, already paying for and completing a real estate program at Hondros College in Dayton that will allow him to take his real estate exam as soon as he graduates.

One reference said Heppeard, whose parents divorced when he was young and he had to move in with his grandparents, calls the senior “a risk taker and self-starter who eagerly accepts challenges.

“You would never know he has faced extraordinary challenges in his life,” the reference said. “Dalton’s success is an inspiring story of courage, perseverance, and dedication.”

“You’ve gotta take risks, you just never want to regret not trying,” Heppeard adds. “You come in with nothing and you leave with nothing, so just go for it.”

Dave Thompson, son of the late Roger Thompson Jr., announced the top finalists, while Roger Thompson Jr.’s wife, Eunice Thompson, presented the top finalists with an additional $500 cash award to go with the $500 award that all 10 finalists receive.

Dave Thompson also thanked the Van Wert Service Club for its work in organizing the awards event and selecting the finalists and top finalists, as well as the business people who attend every year, and the media for promoting it. He saved his final thanks for the 10 finalists themselves.

Following the presentation of the top awards, Van Wert native Kirsten Hoverman Gillespie talked about her career at, first, Google, and now as a product development team leader at Google’s YouTube subsidiary.

Gillespie used Google’s well-known “Two Truths and a Lie” game to illustrate the lies that young people can be told, such as “you’re not good enough,” “you don’t belong here,” and “you can’t do that”.

She said the answer to the “you’re not good enough” lie is to get creative and find a way to change peoples’ perspective about you, while the “you don’t belong here” lie can be overcome by getting a mentor and finding a “tribe” of people you fit in with. As to the third lie, “you can’t do that”, Gillespie cited the Google mantra for “having a healthy disregard for the impossible”, noting what she called the “Moonshot thinking” that famous tech companies, such as Google, Apple, Tesla, and others use to create successful products in a variety of industries.