Storm Lake first responders visit early-head start families for Community Hero Day

Storm Lake’s smallest children spent Community Hero Day meeting the people who would rush to help in a crisis, climbing into emergency vehicles, posing for photos and asking questions as police, fire, patrol, sheriff and ambulance crews visited the Storm Lake Early Head Start Home Base program.

The April 7 gathering brought together the Storm Lake Police Department, Storm Lake Fire Department, Iowa State Patrol, Buena Vista County Sheriff’s Office and Buena Vista Regional Medical Center ambulance staff. For preschoolers and parents, the visit was part tour and part social time, with responders spending extra moments playing with children and talking with families and staff.

Head Start Home Base Coach Lisa Bethune said the community heroes took time out of busy schedules to connect with the program. The visit mattered beyond the smiles and pictures. In a town as diverse as Storm Lake, seeing uniforms in a calm setting can help young children feel less afraid of sirens and flashlights later, while giving parents a chance to put names and faces to the people who may arrive first at a medical emergency, accident or fire.

That kind of familiarity carries weight in Buena Vista County, where the Storm Lake Fire Department traces its history to 1881 and now handles fire suppression, hazardous materials response, technical rescue, fire prevention and public education. The police department says it provides 24-hour law enforcement and operates with 20 sworn officers, plus civilian and volunteer support. The sheriff’s office, headquartered at 411 Expansion Blvd. in Storm Lake, is led by Kory Elston, who has served in the department since 2000 and has been sheriff since 2014.

The ambulance presence also made the day more concrete for parents. Buena Vista Regional Medical Center’s main campus is at 1525 West 5th Street in Storm Lake, and its ambulance staff gave families a direct look at another part of the local safety net that often appears only in stressful moments.

The event fit naturally with Head Start’s broader mission. Created when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law on May 18, 1965, the program marked its 60th birthday nationwide in 2025. Iowa says Early Head Start serves pregnant women and children up to age 3, often through weekly home visits or center-based programming, while Head Start serves children from birth to age 5 from low-income families at no cost and supports family well-being and parent-child relationships. Storm Lake’s own early-childhood program says Early Head Start serves pregnant mothers and children through age 3 through home-based or center-based programming.

Storm Lake has already shown how central the program has become locally. A family fun day at the Gingerbread House classrooms in May 2025 marked the anniversary year, and Bethune has said, “We have a lot of people in our corner. Now we need everybody in our corner.” Community Hero Day put that idea into practice, one child, one parent and one emergency vehicle at a time.