Kyle Soukup
He's always busy lending a hand here and there
Kyle Soukup rarely has a day, or a weekend for that matter, where he just drives home from work and festers on the couch.
He’s too busy doing volunteer work for that to happen.
From coaching his oldest daughter’s softball team to chairing the sanitation committee for RAGBRAI last summer, you name it and Soukup is willing to do it.
His volunteerism also includes running the concession stands at Northwest Junior High sporting events, helping with the West High Booster Club and serving as a citizen representative on the interview committee for the Coralville Police Department employment services.
Soukup learned at an early age about the value of helping others. He graduated from Highland High School and now lives in Coralville with his wife, Laura, and two daughters.
“It makes you feel good when you’re doing something good for the community,” Soukup said. “And it makes you feel good when people recognize that.
“That’s one of the nice things about Coralville because they’ll recognize those things.”
Soukup is especially proud of his work with RAGBRAI last summer. The days were long, hot and tedious, but somebody had to be in charge of cleaning up the mess.
“You feel good,” he said. “The nice thing about that is we got a lot of comments from RAGBRAI and from the riders about how nice everything looked.”
Soukup devised a plan that was designed to keep his volunteer staff one step ahead of the mess.
“I had several good guys help me, and we coordinated everything,” Soukup said. “When I left Saturday I wanted it to look like you never could tell there was anybody that had been there.
“And that’s what we got to.”
Soukup’s reputation made him the ideal choice to head the sanitation committee.
“Actually, I just kind of showed up for a volunteer meeting one night because I knew we were going to help in some way,” Soukup said. “It started out just figuring I’d help the day of and it kind of snowballed into being asked if I’d co-chair a committee.”
Soukup estimated that he worked about 100 hours during the week of RAGBRAI, including one stretch where he worked 22 consecutive hours.
“I got home long enough to basically clean up, shower and take about a two-hour nap,” he said.
One of his next big volunteer projects will be helping with Coralville’s 4th Fest in July.
“It won’t be as intense (as RAGBRAI), but it’s a longer event,” Soukup said. “We’ve got two days full of it.”
— Pat Harty
