DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. – Tom Wencel spent his Friday morning standing next to a stop sign on the corner of Pardee and Annapolis, outside of Pardee Elementary School.
In his hand was a sign reminding anyone who passed through to stop.
“When I first started doing this, I expected people to flip me off,” Wencel, a retired tradesman and current Dearborn Heights city councilman, said.
The people who passed through often waved at him, stopped to speak to him, or exchanged a quick laugh with him before rolling through.
Wencel, 68, is a Dearborn Heights lifer. He started a campaign called “Stop the Madness” to get people in his community to stop at stop signs.
“If you run a stop sign and you get a ticket, or, even worse, if you run a stop sign and hurt or kill someone, your mindset changes about stop signs,” Wencel said. “We’re hoping that just us being out here will change people’s mindsets.”
You might be wondering, why not just get the police involved?
Wencel says the department is short-staffed and needs to focus its resources elsewhere. He also said it simply isn’t practical.
“You stand there with a police officer holding the sign, they’re going to stop anyway,” Wencel said with a laugh. “I want to get the public involved.”
This weekend, Wencel and his volunteers will be popping up next to stop signs as part of the campaign, which is the work of his nonprofit, “Jaime’s Kids,” named in honor of his late daughter, who died suddenly in 2017 at the age of 36.
“She passed away shortly after giving birth to her fifth child, and me and my wife Debbie, we took in the five children and eventually adopted them all,” Wencel said. “Her legacy has to be carried on, because she was a great person, and she left five beautiful children behind to carry on.”
They started the nonprofit to help remodel their home to accommodate the five children.
It has since morphed into a community charity that hosts free community events and a yearly charity golf outing.
The corner of Pardee Avenue and Annapolis Street has a particular meaning as a memorial stands across the street from the school in memory of Joey Smith, a 12-year-old boy who was killed in October 2022 by a driver who ran a stop sign.
If standing on street corners keeps another kid from dying, Tom feels that he’s done his job.
“I just don’t want to have what happened on this corner happen again,” Wencel said. “We don’t want Joey Smith to die in vain.”