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Karen Wallock
VISION Award -Karen Wallock
Story & Photos byFelicia Frazar
Karen Wallock has spent a lifetime volunteering and giving back to her community through various organizations including the Guadalupe County Children’s Advocacy Center, Meals on Wheels and the Seguin Christian Cupboard. It’s her dedication to the community through these outlets and more that have earned her recognition as a Seguin Gazette VISION Award winner.
Volunteering and giving back to the community is something that was ingrained into Karen Wallock as a child. From a young age, she was taught the value of a dollar, as well as giving back.
“We never talked about it, we just did things,” she said. “It was all by example.”
It started with her and her siblings delivering freshly made cookies to their neighbors and a quick trip to the dime store.
“Dad would take us to the old Duke and Ayers Dime Store and he would give us roles of quarters, dimes or nickels, and he would tell us to buy as much stuff as we could,” Wallock said. “We would buy up all of this stuff, we would get back into the car — and sometimes we would have a Santa Claus riding with us, and sometimes it was just us — and we would go to lower income neighborhoods and kids would just be out in the streets and we would give them whatever we bought. We did that for years.”
The Kiel family — Karen, her parents, brothers and sister — also adopted a family during the holidays to ensure they had a good Christmas with food, clothing and toys, Wallock said.
“I think we were a blessing to the families, but we were definitely blessed by that,” she said.
Those lessons Wallock carried with her into high school, college and life, as she has spent much of her time volunteering for the community and her church, giving back where she could. Something all of her family is known for.
“That was just a natural part, doing community service was bred into us,” she said. “Dad was among the first group to receive the Chamber’s Community Service Award, now three of us have as well — my brothers Ken, Jeep and myself. My sister lives in Washington and she does this amazing thing every Christmas. It is just in there. It is ingrained. The three of us here in Seguin all do something different, but it is all outside of ourselves.”
Karen tends to gravitate toward groups and organizations that help the most vulnerable — women, children and seniors.
After graduating from Seguin High School in 1967, Wallock earned her bachelor’s degree in education and taught English at Saegert. She left shortly after to raise her children. During that time, she served as the pres-
ident of Church Women United and was elected to the Seguin ISD School Board, where she served as president.
She eventually went back to teaching part-time at Saegert, then moved to the high school to help with reading improvement, and then onto the Mercer-Blumberg Learning Center to help students get their GED.
She obtained her master’s degree in counseling and was hired full time as the counselor for Saegert Middle School until she retired.
During Karen’s time as a teacher and a counselor, she helped many students in various ways, never really knowing the impact she made until later when those students reached out to her.
“I feel like that job pulled everything together; all of the things I had done,” she said. “So many stories. I wasn’t the best teacher, I wasn’t the best counselor, but people come up to me and I hear their stories and they touch me. You do those things because you believe in humanity and you know that every person has a story and every person deserves help.”
In her retirement, Karen helps various organizations in numerous ways.
She is the volunteer coordinator for the Seguin Public Library’s Bookstore and the volunteer driver coordinator for the Meals on Wheels program. It was there she helped the New Braunfelsbased group grow its local volunteer drivers from 20 to 60.
“We are just celebrating three years of serving the Seguin community, and it is one of the most rewarding ‘gigs’ in town,” she said. “I seldom drive a route, but when I do, the clients are so grateful to have their meal. I have been blessed way beyond my expectations every time I drive.”
After 13 years, Karen is wrapping up her time on the Guadalupe County Children’s Advocacy Center board, where she has long served as its president. Through the Advocacy Center’s Purse Bingo fundraiser, she was able to get a jump start on another project called WIN Purses (Women In Need).
The idea came from her eldest daughter Lisa Jubela, who had a friend that would hand out gently used purses filled with necessities to members of the homeless community.
“We were having Purse Bingo the following week, and said let me see if we can get word out and have people bring their gently used purses to Purse Bingo,” she said. “Then I called my church ladies and said, ‘if we do this, will you help me get the fillings and distribute them?’ Everybody said yes. By that night we had 129 purses and so that just keeps coming.”
The purses were given to the Guadalupe County Family Violence Shelter, the Seguin Christian Cupboard, the Salvation Army and the Women’s Pregnancy Center to hand out to their clients.
Karen also volunteers at the Seguin Christian Cupboard, and is a member of the nonprofit’s building committee. Additionally, Karen is a member of the Seguin ISD Bond Oversight Committee, member of the Delphian Study Club, Retired Teachers Association and three book clubs.
She’s a charter member of Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church, where she served on the first church council and chaired various committees.
She also has served as the president of the Guadalupe County Christian Counseling Center. Her volunteerism also saw her work on various committees at Faith Lutheran Church. She was the Vacation Bible School director, Women of the Church president, and served on the church council. Karen also is part owner of KWED, which was founded by her father, Garfield Kiel.
While she dabbles a lot on various projects, she said she plans it in a way that keeps her free to still enjoy her family. She has three children — Lisa Jubela, Sara Elley and Josh Baker — and nine grandchildren, all of whom follow in her footsteps.
“It is beautiful to see my kids do the same,” she said.
In her spare time, Karen also enjoys reading, going to the gym and playing Mahjong with friends. She is a member of the Sterling Silver Dancers, which was started by the late Irma Lewis and continues to meet regularly.
“I dabble a lot. When I retired, I planned to choose things that I wanted to do and I didn’t want to be regimented,” she said. “I try to keep a balance of fun things. It is something different every day. And it is all things that fill me up, because you can’t give if you are not full.”
It is her continued service to the community that garnered Karen one of the Seguin Gazette VISION Awards.
Karen was surprised and humbled to hear she was nominated.
“It makes your day to help people and to see that someone values what I’ve been doing is an amazing thing,” she said. “Many Bible verses come to mind when doing volunteer work, but Micah 6:8 has been my guiding verse for a long time: ‘What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?’”
