I love it when kids get it...and this kids just gets it....
When Keaton Maring was getting ready for a trip to Lake Havasu in Arizona, she thought it was strange her buddy didn’t have her own life jacket before hitting the water. So that inspired her to pay attention to how many other kids out on the lake didn’t have life jackets on or in the boat and she noticed a lot of them didn’t.
This realization gave Maring the idea to set up a life jacket loaner station at the lake near her home in Colorado. The teen worked with the City of Westminster to install a “life jacket library” near the dock at Standley Lake, where visitors can borrow a kids’ life jacket while on the water and return it to a hook for another visitor to use in the future. She finished the project as part of her Girl Scout Gold Award and hopes more loaner stations are added to area lakes soon.
“Drowning is so preventable,” Maring says. “Like putting on a seatbelt, you just put a lifejacket on and you’re good to go. It’s really that simple.”