He Passes Along Life’S Lessons
The police motto, “To protect and to serve,” meant everything to David Kaplan.
He didn’t know it eventually would land him at the head of a classroom molding young minds in Coeur d’Alene’s new charter school.
“I teach because I’m a patriot and feel it’s the best way to make my country better,” he says with the contagious fervor that separates leaders from the flock.
From his earliest days, David wanted to be a policeman.
“The one thing I’ve always liked to do is serve the public and society,” he says.
As a student at the University of California, San Diego, he worked for the campus police, happily escorting nervous students back to dorms after dark.
“It was the ultimate serving. I just loved it,” he says.
When the time came for David to enter the police academy, he allowed his family to change his mind. He opted for law school and emerged three years later ready to crusade in the courtroom against injustice.
His plans were quickly dashed. An internship in the U.S. Attorney’s Office was promising to start but quickly grew tedious. An associate’s position in two civil law firms was the polar opposite of what he’d planned for his life.
“It was all about money, saving big companies lots of money,” he says.
David wasn’t happy when his boss directed him to help local high school students prepare for a constitutional law debate in 1991. To earn consideration as a partner in his firm, he needed work hours. Volunteer work didn’t count.
But he wasn’t in a position to say no. The two-month experience changed his life.
“It was magic as the kids slowly got it,” he says, smiling. “Seeing their joy and heightened self-esteem - it was something on a spiritual plane. It was the service I’d been looking for.”
He quit his job and worked with his father as a real estate broker while he assessed his life. In 1994, he entered Whitworth College’s 15-month Master’s of Teaching program.
About the same time he began teaching in Spokane elementary schools, David joined the U.S. Army Reserves Judge Advocate General corps. As a uniformed JAG officer, he helps active and retired soldiers and their families with legal problems one weekend each month.
The life of service he’d imagined for himself began to gel.
Last summer, 32-year-old David joined the staff at the charter school. He teaches freshmen and sophomores ancient and medieval history, and coaches soccer.
When he’s not in class or with the Army, he researches for a Spokane law firm and operates his own real estate brokerage in Spokane. He also teaches military law to Gonzaga University ROTC students.
“I’ve never regretted changing careers,” he says. “I keep in touch with three law school buddies, and that tells me where I’d be if I’d stayed in that world.”
Heading south
Coeur d’Alene’s Kristine Deem and her 13-year-old daughter, Ashley Klepper, are heading to Mexico for one week next month with International Missions Project and Construction Team.
They’ll build cinder block homes and distribute flour, beans, rice and blankets. The trip will cost $1,160. If you’d like to help, send donations to IMPACT, P.O. Box 3385, Bellevue, WA 98009.
Hungry habitat
Labor builds an appetite, so Habitat for Humanity is thanking its volunteers with a free meal. Coeur d’Alene’s Outback Steakhouse kindly donated lunches to 50 people who gave up their Saturdays, and sometimes other days, to help build homes in North Idaho for the working poor.