These are your #LocalHeroes — ordinary people doing extraordinary things in Sweetwater County. This SweetwaterNOW series highlights those often unnoticed acts of kindness to the incredible actions of many in our community.

Jessica Hernandez is like many of us in Sweetwater County. She feels great empathy for the graduating classes of our local high schools who don’t get to experience the traditional celebrations of prom, senior ditch day or graduation.

So she decided to do something about it.

It all started when Jessica moved back to Wyoming after spending some time in New Mexico, and some friends from there added her to a Facebook group called “Adopt-a-Senior.” This is a movement sweeping America to help send seniors off with as much love and recognition as possible during the COVID-19 crisis.

“I saw a lot of negative posts from parent and families just because of all the things their kids were missing out on locally,” Jessica explained. “I wanted to not jump on that negative train. So I reached out to a couple of senior parents and asked if anyone had started that here. And it just kind of blew up after that.”

She’s Not Kidding

The Adopt a Sweetwater 2020 Senior group has grown to 1,600 members and counting. The idea is for community members to “adopt” a senior from one of the local high schools and mentor them with small gifts, encouraging messages, and simply supporting these young men and women through a time they’ve worked 12 hard years to reach.

Jessica said within 24 hours about 900 people joined the group, and though most of the seniors have been adopted, she said its perfectly fine for seniors to be adopted by more than one community member.

“Several people would see (a senior) they knew” Jessica said. “So yes kids can get adopted multiple times, but let’s not let anyone fall through the cracks. That didn’t pose a problem at all.”

Jessica says she knows that not every senior has been added to the page. She also said some parents preferred not to have their seniors posted on the page “so they contacted me through messenger and we still connected them with someone.”

All seniors or parents need to do is post the grad’s photos, accomplishments, dreams, and wishes there. Bragging about your senior is highly encouraged!

The post needs to include #notadopted and when someone requests to adopt, the senior is asked to respond to them as soon as possible so the person knows the senior saw it.

Then the senior goes back and edits the post with #adopted2020senior so everyone knows the student has been adopted.

“Then make a connection – private message – asking all information about them. Favorite foods, music, colors , goals, dreams etc.,” Jessica says on the Facebook page. “The idea is to ‘connect’ with a student, hopefully that you don’t already know, and support them with thoughts of encouragement, a text saying have a great day etc.”

Seniors Adopting Seniors

Jessica recently learned that the Adopt-a-Senior group in Cheyenne has taken it a step further. Graduating seniors in Laramie County are now adopting local senior citizens.

“I’m going to try and make that a fun little ‘last competition’ between Rock Springs and Green River,” she said. “So seniors will adopt seniors and do nice things for the local senior centers.”

The Sweetwater County graduating classes of 2020 may not be celebrating in traditional fashion next week, but because of thoughtful and caring community members like Jessica Hernandez, we all hope it’s just as memorable.

Do you know someone who would make a great #LocalHeroes feature? Let us know! Fill out the form below with your nomination. ?