Local teen builds veteran memorial

One local student is working to build a permanent veterans memorial, senior at Lightridge High School. Ilaria Kapoor joins me now to talk more about her project, which, first of all, congratulations. This is an awesome idea, but I think what's really cool is this is not something you were tasked. This is not a club that you're involved in. You just took this on yourself, right? Yes, correct. I just did this because I have a love for history, and I think the best way to preserve that is taking the initiative to look around what's around you and build something out of that. So, what is it that you decided that you wanted to do as far as to honor veterans? So, within my local community, I noticed that there was a lot of veteran, active veteran families. And just overall, our school had recently gotten our Purple Star status. However, I felt we weren't certainly living up to that status yet. And I wanted to figure out a way that I, as a student, could kind of bolster it. So, I decided that a Veterans Memorial Board would be the best route. So, you have a mock-up version of the board. This is just a small version, but this will go in your school, right? And it's going to be there within probably a month, right? Yes, correct. So, you did the work. You basically did the design. You did the fundraising. You did all of this yourself to make sure that veterans are honored in your school and that that will be there after you've already left the school, that it stays. Why were you so passionate about the project? Yeah, because I feel like I wanted to make an impact on my community firstly and I wanted to show that other students could also do the same impact because nowadays it's kind of hard to really do that when everybody is so talented and I feel like doing this showed my personal talent, my personal interests and just how I could impact my local community. So you said you loved history and that's one of the things that got you to do this on your own without kind of being pushed into the project. Where did the love of history come from? I have no idea, honestly. I've always loved history. If you ask my dad, I've been in, like, I would go into museums just for the sake of it, and I would always ask if we could go to, like, all the Smithsonian's. And I think just having that love for history really sparked my desire to look into deeper things, like a career in law, and realize that there's so much history in every single thing we do. And it just kind of came natural to me like that. We're so fortunate to have, like you said, all the museums that are here. Do you have a favorite? I would say the American history is my favorite. Yeah, well, it's great that you're continuing to pay that forward in that particular type of history. What do you hope, and you're a senior now, when you leave and this board stays and the honor is there of veterans at your high school, what do you hope that people take away from that? I hope that they can see that there's no project that's too big for them and that truly anybody can start this. Nobody told me. That I needed to go make a memorial board and nobody was telling me this was like a task that needed to be done. And I want people that are incoming students, already rising seniors, just to realize that if you have a desire to make an impact in your community, that you can truly put your time and effort into it. Was the passion the same the whole way through the process? Because it's easy to come up with an idea, but then when you realize I have to raise money for this and I have to do the heavy lifting, maybe that changes a little bit. What kept you inspired? I realized that I knew at the end of the day it was me who's doing this and if I kind of let it sit back and get this interested it wouldn't get done and certainly there were times that I was like do I really want to do this especially like when it came to school board meetings and fundraising and making sure that people were aware that this was going on. But I knew that there was an end goal, so I pushed through it. Yeah, you pushed through it, and it's got to make you feel good to know that it's going to be there after you're gone as well for future students to look at and future veterans to appreciate. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate the hard work. Thanks for coming in today and showing it off. And the big unveiling is going to be coming up in a couple of weeks, right? Correct. All right, well, congratulations on all your hard work, and thanks for coming here today to celebrate Veterans Day. And we love celebrating folks in the community as well. Well, tomorrow is Veterans Day officially, and we are partnering here at Fox with U.S. Vets for the sixth. annual Make Camo Your Cause campaign. If you can support it, we appreciate it in a number of ways. You can scan the QR code for more information if you'd like to make a donation or you want to purchase some of the camo gear that's available, or you could do so at usvets.com. That campaign will run until November 15th, and again, tomorrow is Veterans Day. Thanks to all who have served and continue to do so. Taylor?