Community is extremely important to La Porte’s Kevin Loeffler, and he knows that any community requires group effort from all its members. He plays his part in the La Porte community by being warm, thoughtful, and inclusive in his everyday life, in order to create a positive impact on those around him.
“At a very basic level, I think it’s just important to remember that we’re all human,” he said. “We’re all gears in a really complicated machine that makes everything work.”
The La Porte native, 36, grew up attending Lincoln Elementary School, Boston Middle School, and La Porte High School. He has worked as a stockman at La Porte’s NIPSCO for four and a half years.
Outside of work, Loeffler looks forward to getting involved with local food networks and improving local sustainability culture.
“I want to make sure people have fresh food and food doesn’t go to waste, and that farmers are giving to the community and the community is giving to the farmers,” Loeffler said.
In his free time, Loeffler designs board games and enjoys spending time outdoors, kayaking, hiking, and biking around the nearby parks and lakes that Northwest Indiana offers him.
“I just try to find the things that make me happy in the everyday, the little details of the world, and capture them for myself,” Loeffler said. “I guess I’m a collector of experiences provided by the world around me.”
Loeffler wants to be that little detail of happiness for others in their everyday lives. He believes that one smile or kind word has the power to change a person’s day.
“First and foremost, being kind and respectful is one of the biggest things on my mind right now,” he said. “It’s trying to engage people on a personal level and trying to understand other points of view and help out where you can help out basically.”
Loeffler said he has learned a lot about being kind, respectful, and engaging from his parents, as well as a high school teacher who he remembers took the time to make sure he, specifically, was being taught and challenged in a way that utilized his full potential.
“He had a substitute and had instructions for the class and everything, but he had special instructions set aside for me to make sure that I did my part and that I was being challenged,” he said. “It made me understand that people recognize the good and the potential in me.”
Most recently, Loeffler has learned how to act with warmth and inclusiveness from his five-year-old son Finnigan. “If you’re paying attention and engaging him on his level, he has a lot to teach you about just general kindness and warmth and being open and honest,” Loeffler said.
In addition to helping his community through warmth and kindness, Loeffler wants to do his part to help society develop a more tolerant and open-minded attitude on how people should treat others.
“I want to be a catalyst in social change,” he said. “I want to be progressive in the community, and to help change ideas and thoughts that are kind of antiquated and don’t have a place in society anymore.”
With Loeffler’s big heart and determination, his goals are quite within reach. He will continue to act with kindness and understanding to help his community, and will work to cultivate that same kindness and understanding in his growing son.
“My goals are to create a positive impact on whatever I take part in and to raise my son with the values that I find important, like respect, inclusiveness, warmth, kindness, helpfulness,” he said.