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CRAPPIE RECORD: See angler’s catch in Spotted Around Town PAGE 7
Leukemia patient needs help Sunday at Kelly’s BY LOGAN GION STAFF WRITER
Lino Lakes resident Mitch Kisch makes sure his neighbors feel less alone. According to his friend, Matt Hyden, Mitch has done one-off jobs around his community since he was a kid—building pools, moving furniture, mowing lawns. If someone needs a helping hand, Mitch is there to support them. “He always makes sure you feel seen,” Toni Williams, Mitch’s friend, said. “He makes sure your birthdays are special. He’s just been a very genuine human being.” Even after his diagnosis of acute leukemia in 2021, Mitch has continued doing fix-it projects when he can. “If somebody needs help, they’ll call him. He’s got his truck, and he’s there,” said Sandy Kisch, Mitch’s mother. Now, however, Mitch needs
CITY OF LINO LAKES | CONTRIBUTED
Lino Lakes honors officer, firefighter Pictured from left: 2026 Minnesota American Legion Police Officer of the Year Alex Hallin and American Legion Post 566 Firefighter of the Year Brett McReavy. Learn more about their accomplishments on Page 5.
CONTRIBUTED
Lino Lakes resident Mitch Kisch undergoes another round of treatment.
someone to be there for him. He needs a bone marrow transplant and a way to pay his hospital bills. That is why Mitch’s friends are holding a public benefit from 2-4 p.m., Sunday, June 28, SEE LEUKEMIA BENEFIT, PAGE 6
Centennial graduates learn to enjoy the present, ‘love the process’
Natalie Jefferson
be the whole point? But just in case you need a reminder: It never ruined your life. Maybe your day but not your life. It just felt like it did. The world kept spinning and you moved on. They told us. We just didn't believe them. Here’s the one that really gets me. Every single adult we have ever met has looked at us and said "high school goes fast, enjoy it." Every. Single. One. We heard it so many times it lost all meaning. It became background
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SEE HIGH SCHOOL GRAD SPEECHES, PAGE 2
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Natalie Jefferson If I had to summarize the last four years in one sentence, it would be this: people tried to warn us, and we did not listen. It wasn’t because we were bad kids. And it wasn’t because the advice was wrong. It’s because some things must be lived in order for them to make any sense. And also because we were teenagers and we knew everything, obviously. Let’s think about it. At some point before high school or even during high school, some adult in your life — a parent, a teacher, an older sibling looked you in the eye and said: "You don't need to have everything figured out." You nodded politely, pretending to listen. And then spent the next four years panicking about not having everything planned out for the rest of your life. They told us. We just didn't believe them. Someone told you that your grades didn't define your worth. Maybe a parent said it after a really rough
noise, like when people say "drive safe" or "let me know if you need anything." We were so busy trying to get to the next thing — the next grade, the next year, the next version of ourselves that we looked up one day and somehow four years had passed like four minutes. So, I would like to formally apologize to every adult who said this to me while I stared blankly back at them. You were right. I was wrong. It went fast. I get it now. They told us. We just didn't believe them. In our defense, you can't really understand that grades aren't your worth until you've tied your whole identity to them. You can't really understand that time moves fast until you're standing here, at graduation, wondering how you got here and how it went by so fast. Some lessons just have to be lived. Apparently that's what it is like to be human. Nobody warned us about that either. Or maybe they did, I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. To the families here — thank you for telling us, even when we rolled our eyes at you. You were right. You were always right. We will probably never fully admit
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week. Maybe a teacher said it while handing back a test you didn't do so well on. And you thought — okay, sure, that's a nice thing to say, but also if I fail this exam my entire future is over and I will have to live in the woods. So you stayed up until 2am, measured yourself in letter grades and point values, and refreshed your grade portal approximately four hundred times waiting for a score that would either ruin or save your life. Because how could that not
The following three speeches were given at Centennial High School’s graduation ceremony on Saturday, June 13, at the Roy Wilkens Auditorium in St. Paul.
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