Chuck Kriegh reaches far

Sometimes good neighbors look beyond their own back yards and help other people far away.

For the past 10 years, Cheney resident Chuck Kriegh has been a good neighbor to the people of Aquiles Serdan, a small village outside Chihuahua, Mexico.

Chuck and his wife of 34 years, Carol, got involved with mission trips to the village through the Cheney United Methodist Church. His daughter went on a mission trip her junior year of high school and came back urging him to go.

He wasn’t much of a churchgoing person at the time, but he thought about it, talked about it with his wife, and woke up in the middle of the night soon afterward knowing that he would go to Mexico.

He helps build houses in the small village and works on a church sanctuary.

Through their church, Carol has organized quilting projects. The children of the church make quilt squares with hand-drawn pictures and messages from them.

Then, the squares are sewn together to give to the youngest child of the village.

Chuck said he’s made wonderful friends in Mexico through his work and has watched some of the local children grow up. He fell in love with what he was doing to make a difference in the area.

“Most importantly, I’m building a relationship with God,” he said. The differences in the communities of Cheney and Chihuahua are a powerful reminder of his own blessings, and he’s glad he can pitch in to help.

“I have to give my baby daughter a lot of credit,” he said.

But Kriegh isn’t always in Mexico, so he’s a good neighbor to the people of Cheney – both the living and the dead.

When he moved into his house 14 years ago, he noticed a neighbor of his driving a tractor up to the cemetery the Krieghs can see from their kitchen window.

One day, he approached the neighbor and asked how he could help.

Since then, he’s been mowing the grass, clearing weeds around headstones, righting stones that have been knocked over from bad weather or vandals, pruning trees, installing water systems and digging holes for cremated remains that come to rest at Fairview Cemetery.

“I like the outdoors,” he said.

He’s been elected the president of the Cheney Cemetery Association for the past 10 years and has helped maintain the New England and the Greenmound cemeteries.

Carol, who works as a school counselor at Salnave Elementary School, said that when they first moved into their house, she wanted to introduce herself to her new neighbors.

“They would say, ‘Oh, you must be Chuck’s wife,’ or ‘We already met Chuck,’ ” she said in an e-mail.

Chuck said that a good neighbor is someone who’s willing to help and not expect anything in return.

“You always get nice things back in tenfold,” he said.

He’ll wave hello to children walking up and down the street, lend his tools to anyone who needs them, help with landscaping and building retaining walls.

At Christmas one year, the whole family went out to dinner, and he noticed two women in the restaurant sitting all alone. He paid for their dinners and asked the waitress to wish them a merry Christmas.

In the winter, he’s been known to plow snow from the sidewalks and driveways of his neighbors, sometimes spending six hours at a time on the project during heavy snowfalls.

He credits his grandparents for showing him how to be a good neighbor.

When he was 11, his father died. His mother didn’t have much of an education, since she had planned on being a housewife, but her husband’s death forced her to go back to school.

While she was busy studying, his grandparents, an uncle and the rest of the family helped to pay the bills and do what was needed to get the family through until his mother got a job.

These days, Chuck is pretty busy. He’s been retired from Lakeland Village for seven years and has found that volunteering is a good way to spend his time.

He’s taught hunter education through the state on a volunteer basis for the past 10 years. He teaches classes about gun safety, survival, conservation, first aid and more.

He also started volunteering this past winter as a mountain host at 49 Degrees North. He welcomes skiers to the mountain, gives them a ski report and shows them around the mountain, taking the skiers to places appropriate to their ski level.

He doesn’t get paid for his work, but he does get a ski pass.

He feels that being a good neighbor is important to the community. He understands that many people don’t know their neighbors these days and feels it’s unfortunate, since a strong community feels like a safe one.

“It’s just nice to help,” he said.