A life spent staying curious

If there is one lesson our Volunteer of the Month, Don Checots, has learned throughout his life, it is that you never quite know where the next opportunity will take you.  

“You’ve got to roll with life, keep on keeping on,” is the motto he lives by.  

For Checots, this mindset has taken him from a small town in western Pennsylvania to the Air Force, broadcasting stations across the country, and eventually volunteering here at the Minneapolis VA. 

Checots grew up in rural Pennsylvania, in a mining family. At 17, with the possibility of being drafted hanging over him, Checots made a decision that would change the course of his life: he joined the Air Force.  

Two weeks after graduating high school in 1965, he left home. It was his first time on an airplane.  

Checots found that unexpected opportunities had a way of appearing. Shortly after completing basic training, a sergeant walked into the room one morning and asked if anyone knew how to type, Checots, a strong typist in high school, raised his hand. “I ended up becoming his little orderly room clerk,” he recalled.  

 After working with the sergeant for two months, Checots was asked what he wanted to do next. His answer was instantaneous: “I want to go into personnel.” The next thing he knew, he was on his way to the Amarillo Air Force Base in Texas for personnel school.  

Through his work in personnel, he was able to jump on an opportunity to volunteer for AFRTS, the Armed Forces Radio Television Service. That choice got him an education at DINFOS, the Defense Information School, at the time located at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana.  

After a stint of working in Thailand installing radio and TV stations in Vietnam, Checots got out of service in 1968 and began his career in civilian broadcasting. He worked in commercial radio under the on-air name “Don Thomas” before moving into television and public broadcasting. Along the way, he earned a degree in broadcast management at Eastern Michigan University, did tour in the Michigan Army National Guard, and eventually came to Minnesota to help build a public television station in Bemidji.  

At just 30-years-old, Checots became the youngest manager in the PBS system at the time. He started with a team of himself, an administrative assistant, and a secretary. “We took it from there, and we built the station, hired staff, and got funding,” he said. They built the Bemidji station from the ground up, an experience that inspired him to pursue additional leadership roles.  

During his time at Bemidji, Checots completed a Bush fellowship at Harvard in executive management. When he returned to Minnesota, he didn’t stay long; he moved to Indiana to work as a manager of WNIT, a PBS station in South Bend.  

He worked eight years in Indiana before deciding to move on. Since he had already worked at the community and university level, Checots found a job at the state level as executive director for South Dakota Broadcasting. He worked there for several years before moving to his final broadcasting job in Kansas where he retired in 2007.  

Retiring in the Twin Cities, however, did not mean Checots was ready to stop trying new things.  

He began exploring jobs and volunteer opportunities he had always wondered about, from experiencing a Black Friday working in retail to learning more about cycling at a bike shop.  

One experience showed him the impact that simply spending time with another person could have.  

Checots worked with Help at Your Door, a nonprofit that delivers groceries to older adults and people with disabilities who can no longer shop independently. He drove around the metro delivering groceries and getting to know the people along his route.  

“Sometimes I’d be the only person some of those people would see,” Checots said. He remembers customers waiting for him with coffee and a cookie, hoping he could stay a little longer and talk.  

After Checots began receiving his own care at the Minneapolis VA, he decided to get involved as a volunteer. With his extensive background in broadcasting and communications, he was connected with medical media/ public affairs and began taking on a variety of assignments. 

One of those assignments was writing the Volunteer of the Month stories, giving Checots the opportunity to sit down with fellow volunteers and share the experiences that brought them to the VA. It’s fitting work for someone whose own story has been shaped by the people and opportunities he encountered along the way.  

Looking back, Checots knows his path was not a carefully planned one. Instead, each new experience gave him confidence to take the leap on the next one. “I sort of just rolled with things,” he said. “I never really felt that I couldn’t do it.”  

For Checots, volunteering at the VA is another chapter in a life spent staying curious, connecting with others and remaining open to whatever comes next. Congratulations to "Don Thomas" on being recognized as Volunteer of the Month.