POCAHONTAS — Wendy Kirchhoff doesn’t have to be from Pocahontas to be the town’s biggest fan.

Though she grew up in the eastern Iowa town of Amana, she moved to Pocahontas in 2005 and has immersed herself fully into the community.

“Pocahontas has just been an amazing town to live with,” Kirchhoff said. “I feel like everyone is close. They would do anything to help anybody, and I just feel like this town is like one big family.”

As a business woman, Kirchhoff owns The Zone bowling alley in downtown Pocahontas and Hair Cuts & More on Hwy 4.

“I was a chamber board member for a number of years,” she said. “Did quite a bit through the chamber.”

Over the years, Kirchhoff has been involved in a number of community projects, from being on the board for the town’s breast cancer fundraiser golf tournament, to helping organize the town’s 2020 sesquicentennial, which had to be rescheduled to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We decided to cancel this celebration this year and move it to next June, where it will be 150 plus one and we’re going to make it bigger and better,” she said.

Kirchhoff helped create “Pocahontas-opoly,” a Monopoly board game personalized to the town of Pocahontas. She’s also active with the 100+ Women Who Care chapter in Pocahontas County.

“That’s a club with women who get together, and we pull our money together and just figure out who is in need of some help,” she said. “I’m very big into fundraising.”

She’s raised three kids in Pocahontas, and now has two grandkids. As a mother and a grandmother, Kirchhoff cares deeply for the children in Pocahontas.

When COVID-19 threatened Easter festivities earlier this spring, Kirchhoff organized a drive-thru Easter basket pick-up and Easter bunny visit for the kids in the community.

“Just with this whole COVID thing, I just felt sorry for the kids because the kids didn’t really understand what was going on,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t going to be normal, but I just wanted to try to do something for the kids.”

Kirchhoff and a friend solicited donations from businesses and residents in town and bought baskets and toys and candy to assemble into the Easter baskets.

On the day of the drive-thru, Kirchhoff handed out baskets to cars outside The Zone. The line of cars stretched from Main Street all the way to the Dollar General on Highway 3, she said.

They eventually ran out of baskets, but with dozens of cars still lined up, passersby ran to the stores to pick up more supplies. Even with that extra help, Kirchhoff said they were short by about 45 baskets.

So she did what was the obvious solution to her — she took the names and phone numbers of those still waiting in line. She went shopping again, made 45 more baskets and delivered them later that afternoon.

In total, 327 Easter baskets were given out that day.

Though she organized the efforts, Kirchhoff credits the help from the Pocahontas community that made it happen.

“The businesses here in town were all just so helpful,” she said. “Even the residents of the community found out what I was doing and were like, ‘Hey, we want to help make this happen.'”

Also this spring, Kirchhoff organized an effort to salute the Pocahontas Area Community School District class of 2020. Working with other businesses in town, she collected funds to create banners celebrating each graduating senior. She obtained the senior photos and copyright releases for all 63. The city stepped in to add new brackets onto the street light poles in downtown.

Once the senior banners were up, the town held a “scoop the loop” cruise up and down Main Street in honor of the seniors.

“I don’t think we’ve seen so many cars on Main Street ever, so that was really cool,” Kirchhoff said.

Even with a pandemic putting a damper on everything, Kirchhoff isn’t slowing down on the work she does in her town.

“I just feel it is important to keep your town thriving,” she said. “I really want to keep Pocahontas going.”