Hero Story

During Covid many kids were struggling not seeing their friends and not getting to experience a normal school year, especially graduating seniors. Rylie Dewley at the time Covid hit was a sophomore and saw how sad so many of her senior classmates were. They were missing homecoming, prom, and so many other school events. She decided to do something safe and fun for them and created the Grand Blanc Adopt a Senior community program. This group grew to be large quite quickly. With over 1700 High School seniors, members of the community stepped up to help make the seniors' year something amazing. They spoiled these kids with all types of gifts, yard signs and love. It couldn't replace what they were missing but it sure did help. This program has been in place for two years now and is entering its third year. The Principal at GBHS has loved the community support so much and all the fun that this program has created and the joy it brings that he has decided to keep it going for years to come.

Rylie also created an organization called Start Heart Smart. She suffers from heart issues and knows how important it is to keep a healthy heart. She feels it's something not many kids/teens think about so she created a simple acronym to teach kids how to think about their heart. HEART- Healthy Choices, Exercise, Avoid risky behaviors (ie-smoking), Reduce stress, and Think about your choices. With this, she has done virtual presentations and pre-covid, she was going into classrooms to speak to kids about this. She just recently was allowed to enter a classroom again to teach kids how to be heart healthy. With this program, she has also created over 200 heart care packages and donated them to Hurley Children's Hospital along with the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor Mott Children's Hospital. These packages are for youth cardiac patients and include an array of goodies in them to let them know they are not alone and that someone is thinking of them. She is working on creating more boxes to donate to other hospitals in Michigan.

One of the other things that Rylie did during Covid was to create videos for kids so they had activities to keep themselves busy. These ranged from story time to arts & crafts and simple stretching exercises. She then shared them on different social media sites for parents to be able to share with the kids.

Lastly, Rylie--along with her brother--has also donated two little free libraries to the community: one at their old elementary and one in a local subdivision. They did this a few years ago and have held book drives to be able to supply books for these and to date, they have collected and donated back over 500 books.

Rylie has been very active in her community for so many years that this is honestly just a touch of all she has done. She continues to volunteer with Salvation Army, Children's Miracle Network, Toys for Tots, Adopt a Highway (being an owner of a portion of highway in Genesee county), Carriage Town Ministries and many other local charities. She is a true hero and loves being able to give back.