Swimming on a DARE
Keith Krause began his Sept. 7 swim across Geneva Lake from a familiar spot. Four years earlier, as a triathlete, Krause had done a one-mile swim in this lake before cycling 30 kilometers and running ten kilometers. But in 1993, a broken shoulder from an off-road vehicle accident made doctors predict that the young Wisconsin CO, a steward for AFSCME Local 1925-B (Council 40), would never again swim competitively.
But Krause didn't give up, though at first he found himself unable to maintain a steady rhythm in the water.
In 1996, however, Krause regained his rhythm and began swimming regularly in nearby Alcorn, Wisc. The 29-year-old began the summer swimming a mile each day, building up to two- and three-mile swims on his days off. By August, he was swimming some 15 miles a week.
Retirees in this resort community watched his progress around the lake and timed him. Schoolchildren there - recognizing his uniform on the days when he came straight from work as a CO at Walworth County Jail - told him they had seen fellow law enforcement officials present the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program. He got an idea.
Krause approached the sheriff's office to discuss his swimming Geneva Lake as a fundraiser for DARE, a national pro-gram in which representatives from the sheriff's office go into local schools to educate students about drugs and drug abuse resistance. The Walworth County Sheriff's Department raises some $6,000 a year for the program and maintains a full-time DARE instructor. Krause is convinced the DARE program is having a positive effect on schoolchildren's attitude toward men and women in uniform.
The sheriff's department approved Krause's request and three months later - with permits in hand, training boats by his side and $3,200 raised, including some $1,500 from fellow AFSCME members - he began his swim.
He says he chose Geneva Lake because he wanted a challenge: "I wanted to do something that people would question 'Could it be done?'"
As a triathlete, Krause had swum out and back to the same shore. For the fundraiser, he plotted a course running the length of the lake - 8.3 miles. The farthest he had swum in training was five miles.
It was foggy at 6 a.m. when he began stroking through the 73-degree water with two escort boats beside him.
In an event like this, Krause says, "you go until you can't go anymore." For the five hours it took him to swim from the village of Fontana to the city of Lake Geneva, he didn't think about his destination or about how far he'd come. "You can't really think about anything but swimming," he explains.
When his escort boats stopped in front of him, he realized he had made it. He walked out, unsteady at first from the long swim, to the cheers of parents, friends and union brothers and sisters.
Now, approaching the end of another Wisconsin winter, Krause is trying to come up with a DARE fundraiser for next year, maybe a bike ride. In the meantime, he says, "I'm looking forward to the lake's thawing out."
