Congratulations to this year’s winner of Coronado’s Westside Recipient Award, Emily Boehlke! Boehlke has been volunteering in D11 since 1997, when the first of her four kids started kindergarten at Chipeta; Boehlke was doing everything from volunteering with  PTA and SAC to tutoring kids and helping with drama club. “I kinda ran the gamut,” Boehlke said as she laughed.

Emily Boehlke originally became involved with the Westside community because she was inspired by her sister-in-law, Mary Wierman, who was a D11 school board member for a number of years. Boelke says of her late sister-in-law, “She was instrumental in encouraging me to come with her to board meetings, to meet the other board members and the administration in D11, to come to conferences, to spend time in schools, and she really inspired me to support the kids on the Westside and the kids of D11 as much as I could. She was such a champion for my own kids and for the district’s kids, and she was a really good role model for me to see that the need was there and to show me that I could carry on in her footsteps.”

Emily Boehlke went, and still tries to go, to one game or match for each sport every year. “I try to put my money where my mouth is,” says Boehlke, “I’m not going to tell people to do something and not do it myself.” Her philosophy of leading by example worked; she inspired many others to volunteer as well as contributing to the community herself. And, she enjoys being involved in the community at sporting games or otherwise: “it’s tight-knit; the Westsiders look out for each other, they’re close that way,” she says.

Even as all of her children have graduated from Coronado, Emily Boehlke still spends her free time helping the community; she is involved in the El Paso County CERT (Community Emergency Response team) which works as a backup to first responders, including helping with phone banking, search and rescue, and preparedness as well as a volunteer for CAPS (Community Advancing Public Safety) where she works with the Colorado Springs Police Department.

Boehlke says of winning the Westside Award, “I’m just honored and shocked to have been selected. And I give a lot of credit to the support of my family; my husband worked so that I could be a stay-at-home mom and that gave me the opportunity to give to the community. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a welcome volunteer and to have been given the chance to share my ideas and carry out plans and programs. I wanted every child to have as many advantages as I feel like my kids just naturally had because of our home life.”

Emily Boehlke will be riding in her own Corvette at the homecoming parade on October 6th. Be sure to cheer for her; she has done so much for Coronado and for the Westside community!