By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
Local law enforcement departments made a special moment for the county’s Special Olympics athletes.
Law enforcement officers from the Bucyrus Police Department, the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, and the Bucyrus Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol ran one leg of the Law Enforcement Torch Run for the Special Olympics Thursday. A group of 19 local officers ran two miles from the Bucyrus Post of the Highway Patrol to Kroger, where the grocery store employees lined up to cheer for the runners as they made their rest stop, before continuing on to Galion.
Jim Plasencia will be competing in the Special Olympics this year and he was excited to see the torch run come through Bucyrus. He began competing in the Special Olympics in 1983. This year he will be competing in volleyball.
“We meet a lot of different teams and we give teams good luck and they give us a good luck,” Plasencia said.
Plasencia is just one of the athletes that will be competing but he was joined by Jim Trainer, the local coordinator for the Special Olympics, and other athletes as the torch run reached Kroger.
“I schedule ball games, get the events ready to go and so forth, just make sure our Special Olympians get the opportunity to participate in athletics,” Trainer explained about his duties.
Trainer said he was notified that the torch run would be coming through Bucyrus and took the opportunity to get his athletes involved in it. “It was neat. It was really fun. Something we haven’t seen before,” he said.
Plasencia and other Special Olympians had the opportunity to get their picture taken with the law enforcement officers and the Kroger employees.
“It’s a great cause,” said Bucyrus Police Chief Dave Koepke. “The Special Olympics is a fantastic cause to support and great for the kids.”
Carla Seif may not have been in law enforcement but she is a dedicated runner and jumped at the chance to participate in the torch run. She was excited to be involved in the event.
“I would like to eventually coach Special Olympics,” Seif said. “I just like to be part of that. This just kind of feels like it will get me in to that. I just love it.”
A photo gallery from the event can be found on our Photos page.