Posts Tagged "Service"
Serving All Year: How Lake Catholic Is Deepening Its Commitment to Others
November 26, 2025
Historically, as both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approach, volunteerism and charitable giving peak compared to other times throughout the calendar year.
Lake Catholic High School is no different.
The entire school participates in Socktober throughout October. Led by Visual Arts Department Chair Mrs. Kelly Wolf, students, faculty, and staff collect socks and money for donation to several local charities.
On Monday of this week, the Class of 2026 took part in the 51st annual Turkey Day event. What had started back in 1974 as a Thanksgiving feast for friends to enjoy each other as an entire class has turned into much more for Lake Catholic students, as they live out one of the school’s core values – its willingness to serve.
And next week, on the National Day of Giving, the school community will once again participate in #weGiveCatholic, which is the school’s largest single-day of giving, and benefits all current students.
Although students have always been called to serve and give back throughout all four years at Lake Catholic, Mrs. Beth Paskey, who joined the faculty this school year, is enriching that commitment in new ways. She’s making service more accessible, more visible, and more woven into everyday school life.
Paskey, who’s been in Catholic education for the past 34 years, including the last 17 years at St. Gabriel, teaches Freshmen Theology during the morning and then serves as the school’s service coordinator throughout the afternoon – not that those roles are exclusive of each other.
“When this job became available, and the way it’s structured, it was a no-brainer for me,” Paskey said. “A life of service is what we’re called to live. Watching the students get involved and help others is what I enjoy the most. Taking time out of school and helping others in a different environment – it’s very rewarding for me to see.”
Outside of Turkey Day, where nearly a dozen locations were visited by the senior class, students of all grade levels have made multiple trips to Birthright Lake, Inc., Brookdale Senior Living, and the St. Gabriel Food Pantry. Students have also been to the Warehouse of HOPE, participated in both a Living Rosary at St. Gabriel School and the Respect Life Day planned by the Catholic Schools for Peace and Justice Network, and helped out at the Special Sports Halloween Party hosted right here at Lake Catholic.
So far, 103 students have participated in 15 projects, averaging approximately 154.5 hours of service. Turkey Day accounted for another 111 students at 12 locations for about 2.5 hours of service each.
All that in three-plus months of school. And that’s not even counting any service the students do on their own.
“We want service to become the norm,” Paskey said. “We want the students to want to do these things, and not something they have to do to check the box, so to speak.”
The school does have service requirements for the students to graduate. A minimum of 50 hours – 10 hours as a freshman, 15 hours as both a sophomore and junior, and another 10 hours as a senior – is the minimum. To earn the service cord to be worn at the commencement ceremony, a student must have at least 80 hours of service.
“Right now, I work a lot with the freshmen because that’s who I teach,” Paskey said. “To some of the upperclassmen, I’m just a name on an email. But I’m already making plans for the second semester and would love to take kids to different places at least two days a week.”
Some students have even reached out to Paskey with their own ideas for service. A group of students approached her about going to play music at different locations.
“This is not just a me thing,” she said. “Students can come up with their own plans, and I’ll help arrange them in any way I can.”
With Paskey’s leadership and the students’ growing enthusiasm, service at Lake Catholic continues to evolve—not as an obligation, but as a shared way of life.
Socktober 2025: Wrapping Warmth in Every Pair
November 06, 2025
What started as a simple idea between two individuals six years ago has grown into a powerful community tradition of giving. Each October, Mrs. Kelly Wolf, the Lake Catholic Visual Arts Department Chair, teams up with Ms. Julie Tinik for Socktober—a month-long sock drive to support those experiencing homelessness and hardship.
What began with a few boxes of donations has now turned into thousands of pairs of socks and countless acts of kindness.
This year’s Socktober drive was another incredible success. The Lake Catholic community alone donated 4,109 pairs of socks. Including donations collected at Angie’s New York Style Pizzeria in Mentor-on-the-Lake (155 pairs) and by Tinik herself (1,214 pairs), 5,478 pairs of socks will be split up and delivered to Project Hope, Sub Zero, Forbes House, WomenSafe Inc., and City Mission.
The six-year total for Wolf and Tinik is an astounding 18,943 pairs of socks—nearly 19,000 steps toward warmth and comfort for those in need.
The top donors from Lake Catholic were Lily Long (’27), John Cunningham (’28), Lucas Boling (’29), Mason Ruiz (’29), and Mr. Jamie Simonis.
Wolf, who organizes Lake Catholic’s contributions, looks forward to the drive each fall—even if the start always brings some nerves.
“Every year that Lake Catholic starts collecting, I wonder if we can beat last year’s total,” she said. “I get a little nervous, and then special things start happening. Students, parents, and faculty start getting involved. Social media works in so many ways of getting the word out about what we are doing.”
And when the socks start coming in, it’s a sight to behold. The total from Lake Catholic this year increased by 745 pairs compared to last October.
“As we started loading the socks, I wondered if I had a big enough truck,” Wolf said. “If we had put all 5,478 socks together, we definitely would have needed a bigger truck. That’s a great problem to have! I’m so thankful to the Lake Catholic community and to Julie Tinik that together we can help so many people.”
This year, a new partner joined the effort: Christina Earl, owner of Angie’s New York Style Pizzeria, who placed a collection bin in her store lobby. Earl, known for her support of local causes like Forbes House and Project Hope, jumped right in to help. “She was more than willing,” Wolf said. “Her community spirit made a huge difference.”
For Tinik, Socktober is about much more than socks.
“It’s absolutely amazing and brings me such great joy, especially this time of year with the cutbacks on a lot of programs,” she said. “I’m unbelievably grateful for those who gave a little back. It will definitely help others with nothing. Random Acts of Kindness still lives.”
Each year, Socktober proves that small acts of kindness—like donating a pair of socks—can come together to make a big difference. As Wolf and Tinik look ahead to another year, their shared goal remains the same: to keep spreading warmth, comfort, and compassion, one pair at a time.
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By The Numbers
Over the last six years, Lake Catholic has collected and donated 15,068 pairs of socks!
- 600 pairs in 2020
- 2,021 in 2021
- 2,999 in 2022
- 1,975 in 2023
- 3,364 in 2024
- 4,109 in 2025
Sophomore Runs to Give Back
October 14, 2025
One of the core values held closely by all Lake Catholic students and alumni is a Willingness to Serve.
So, when there’s someone in need, it doesn’t matter how difficult the task is.
For sophomore Nick Evangelista (St. Mary of the Assumption), putting his body through extreme conditions was no deterrent to raising money for children battling life-threatening illnesses.
For 24 hours, from noon on Saturday, October 4, to noon on Sunday, October 5, Nick took part in the 24:in:24 presented by CleanEats at the SPIRE Academy. According to the 24:in:24 website, the event itself features challengers attempting to run one mile every hour, on the hour, for 24 consecutive hours.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Nick said. “I was still so sore for about four or five days afterward.”
After watching his aunt take part in the race a year ago, Nick, who is a member of the Lake Catholic track and field team, decided he wanted to give it a try.
“I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, all the while raising money for a good cause,” he said.
By himself, he raised more than $1,100 for the cause. He said his mom’s employer, Jenniffer & Co., was the biggest donor, but he also had a lot of single contributors. Last year, the event brought in $565,000 for A Special Wish – Northeast Ohio Foundation.
Nick said he’s been running on his own since about fifth grade after having played basketball for a few years, but he’s never actually trained for something like this. And really, he didn’t train much for the 24:in:24 either. He said he trained for just one day to try to get his endurance up, but then just spent the entire day before the event resting and saving as much energy as he could.
He started off the 24 hours well, doing his one mile per hour in under 7 minutes.
“After each mile, you had to go up two flights of stairs to get back to where we had our camp set up. So, you think you have close to an hour in between each mile, but really it was just about 35 minutes.”
It did get to the point where his mom actually made him sleep for an hour to help his body recover. He slept from 2a-3a on Sunday, which caused him to miss miles 15 and 16.
“You are able to make up the miles you miss,” he said. “So, by mile 19 I was caught up.”
Some of the families and children who benefit from A Special Wish were on hand to cheer on all the runners, and as Nick said, they helped serve as extra motivation for those last few miles over those last few hours.
“The last lap was absolutely the hardest,” he said. “But when you are carrying that flag that you are on your last lap, and then when you cross that finish line, it’s the best feeling.”
After the grueling day, he said he slept until 10a Monday morning, waking up for just a couple of hours before that. Despite the challenge, he said he would do it again.
“Being a part of this school, a place that does stuff like this all the time for other people, is what made me want to do it,” he said. “And when it’s an event like this that helps so many people, anything I can do to help raise money, or just spread the word about it, it means so much regardless of what I have to go through.”
Art Students Turn Service-Learning into Valentines
February 13, 2025
One of the Lake Catholic core values is “a willingness to serve.” The sign that you see when you leave the school parking lot reads “Exit to Serve.” All students must complete 50 hours of service to graduate and have 80 hours to qualify to wear the Service Cord at commencement.
Service is woven throughout the fabric of the Lake Catholic school year – service projects on and off campus, Turkey Day, Meal Ministry, Pallbearer Ministry, and the list goes on and on.
Service-learning, though, is another form of service – one that second-year art teacher Carolina Kane hopes to bring more of to her classes with the hope that it spreads throughout the school.
“I’m trying to bring service-learning into what I do in my classroom,” Kane said. “It’s actually a goal of mine. I want it to be incorporated into my curriculum. It’s what I did when I worked at John Carroll, and I want to bring that type of service here.”
Service-learning is more than just a beach cleanup, raking leaves, or shoveling a driveway – although all of those things are important. Service-learning incorporates the learning aspect of the classroom with the service.
So, although Kane’s Art Foundations class and the Art Club seemingly just made Valentine’s Day cards, there was more to it than that.
“We did these before Thanksgiving, so it was one of the first actual design projects we did,” Kane said. “But it was more than making the cards. It was how they interacted with the card. How did the paper feel in their hands? What colors made sense to use? What font and font sizes made the most sense for this project?”
Although it was a real classroom lesson and project for Kane and her students, the service part of it will have a much broader reach.
As a school, nearly 100 cards were donated to the Lake County Council on Aging’s Meals on Wheels program to be delivered on Valentine’s Day. In total, from nine schools, more than 1,400 cards were collected for distribution.
“When people receive these cards, most of them are just so excited,” said Kelly Johnson, who helps Meals on Wheels spearhead the Valentine’s Day card initiative. “You can just see on their faces how much it means to them and that it makes their day.”
The cards were made before Thanksgiving because Johnson and her team of volunteers have to inspect each card by hand because there is a list of things that each one can, or can’t, say on it.
“Carolina and her students’ cards were awesome,” Johnson said. “While it usually takes us hours to go through a school's cards, I don’t think we spent more than an hour on the cards from Lake Catholic. They followed the parameters perfectly. Every person that hand-checked the cards from Lake Catholic loved them and came away very impressed.”
While a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Kane worked as a photographer and visual storyteller with John Carroll’s Center for Service and Social Action (now the Center for Service-Learning and Social Action), which is where she was then hired when she graduated from CIA. And she said service-learning is something she’s always been drawn to and wants to bring more of here at Lake Catholic.
“We see it all the time here – the spirit of giving and service,” she said. “It’s right there in the mission of Lake Catholic. I just want to continue to help our students appreciate their important role of service, but while also learning.”
According to the Council on Aging’s website, Meals on Wheels delivers food five days per week, with an option for frozen meals for the weekend. According to a study conducted by Brown University and funded by AARP Foundation, home delivered meals improve overall health, reduce anxiety and depression, decrease feelings of loneliness and isolation, and help seniors feel more safe and confident about living in their own home.
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