Many words were said at the Kosciusko Jail Chemical Addiction Program graduation ceremony Friday for eight men, but the often-repeated one was “thanks.”
Thanks for the support. Thanks for the contributions. Thanks for your time, and thanks for caring.
In his welcoming remarks to those in attendance at the JCAP graduation, Sheriff Kyle Dukes said, “It’s hard to believe we’re at a JCAP graduation again. Unbelieveable.”
He then cited a list of thank-yous to businesses, employees, churches, pastors, counselors, coaches, elected officials and more.
“We have a 54% success rating because of you. Because of you guys, volunteering your time, coming in. You’re making a difference,” Dukes said.
He then shared some “exciting” news that “the JCAP episodes and the videos that we watched several months ago on our Facebook page, we’re bringing those back. It’s going to be fun to watch.” He said they filmed the first one three days ago, and Friday’s graduation was being filmed and would be up on the Facebook page by Friday evening.
“It’s going to be a tough graduation because this team here was different,” Dukes said, saying this class was not like the previous ones. “… The night before JCAP started, they pulled their commissary together, their resources, and they had a dinner. We’d never seen that before. The theme of that dinner was ‘tomorrow morning, we are all in.’”
He said the eight men were “all in” from day one and he told them they were “true to their word.”
Dukes then talked about how all three county school superintendents – Warsaw’s Dr. David Hoffert, Tippecanoe Valley’s Blaine Conley and Wawasee’s Dr. Steve Troyer – were invited it to JCAP and the men shared their good and bad stories of school. He also talked about how a sheriff’s office from Tennessee drove up to check out Kosciusko’s JCAP.
Each of the JCAP participants then thanked the instructors, which included representatives of the Bowen Center, Lifeworks, New Life Christian Church, Purdue Extension, The Beaman Home, 1st Source Bank, Grace College, Music Encounters, Warsaw Community Schools, WorkOne and before5.org.
After JCAP graduates Justin Wadkins, Derek Bruner, Chris Henson, Nick Irvine, Lucas Oglesbee, Davey Mefford, Aarron Warren and Josh Slagle received their diplomas, they collectively expressed their appreciation to JCAP Coordinator Courtney Jenkins.
She then gave the closing remarks for the graduation ceremony.
“This is really a wonderful group of men, as you can see. So I just wanted to tell you a few things that haven’t come up through this,” Jenkins said.
First, five of the men in the High School Equivalency tutoring class graduated and have their high school diplomas. “They worked so hard,” she said. “It’s just been incredibly rewarding to see them work together, where somebody had a strong suit in math or somebody else’s strong suit was reading, and they worked and they leaned on each other and they really attributed to each other’s success.”
She then spoke a few words about each of the eight men “because they’ve really become a part of my life.”
Jenkins said that every time she walked out of their jail block, she felt really good like she was making a difference.
“I want you guys to know that you really gave me hope,” she told them.
And then to the people at the graduation, Jenkins said, “Thank you, guys, it’s been again an amazing privilege to work with all of our contributors because they care so genuinely and they go out of their way” to support the program.
