October 5th, 2022

Boogie Along Farm & Rescue, LLC is a huge supporter of our First Responders and Military Personnel. So when an opportunity arises to assist them we will not pass that opportunity up to assist them when we are able.

BAFR started a small community project in August of 2022 raising funds to build kits with life saving medical equipment specifically geared towards gun shooting victims for one of the highest gun crime districts in the Chattanooga, TN area. When we set out on this journey, we didn’t tell many people or make it publicly known what we were doing because we honestly didn’t know how the community and donors would react to this project. We didn’t want to let the team down if we weren’t sure we could make this happen.

The kits we were making for the officer’s are known as IFAK kits. Each kit would cost around $95 per officer to make, and yes, we hand-packed each bag with help from family. By buying supplies in bulk and building our own IFAK kits versus buying premade ones, we were able to get the officers more equipment they can use and less bag fillers that they can’t use that come in the premade kits.

Starting off the donations were slow, and we were honestly losing hope in bringing this project to life. A coworker of Jessica’s mentioned the UNFoundation of Chattanooga and told me her she should apply for their grant and she won! With the donations we did receive on top of the grant our project was able to grow from ten kits to forty kits, allowing us to not only give one to each officer on one work week for 2nd shift, but also to the 3rd shift as well. The district consists of two teams North & South with two work weeks per shift. We were able to provide a kit for both teams' work week and for 2nd and 3rd shift!

We are beyond blown away by all those who believed in our project and helped support it whether it was financially, physically, or even just encouraging us to keep working at it.

With the help of Jessica’s sisters, Mother-in-law, and husband, we were able to organize a Front Porch Line Up event on October 5th, 2022 to hand out the kits to most of the officers on 2nd shift. From everyone at BAFR we would like to say thank you to our first responders who put themselves in harm's way every day they put their uniform on, we know it’s not an easy job. Thank you will never be enough for what you all do, but we hope these kits help make your job a little easier.

We would like to thank everyone who donated to help with this project:

1. UNFoundation of Chattanooga for believing in our project and voting for Jessica to win the grant for the Month of August.

2. Bill Dethero with Newby Dethero Engineering, LLC

3. Clifton McCormick with Hefferlin + Kronenberg Architects, PLLC

4. Heidi Hefferlin with Hefferlin + Kronenberg Architects, PLLC

5. Terry Uren

Kit Building Day September 28th, 2022

Officer Mills holding one of the kits after they were given out

October 5th, 2022

Update September 29th, 2023:

After we accomplished this project, we were going to start working building kits for officer's on other shifts and in other districts throughout the city but the City of Chattanooga seen the need and has put money aside in their yearly budget to provide the life saving equipment to their officers. While the screen shot shows this update, we are aware that in the post from the City of Chattanooga's Mayor that someone else is taking recognition on coming up with this idea and we are sadden that they couldn't be honest about this project, but also know that we did not do this for public recognition and are just glad the city now sees the need for this equipment. We just wanted to make sure our officer's have everything they need to help others and are happy our small project was able to help push the city along to make this part of their standard issued equipment for them and to be placed in their yearly budget to provide these life saving items to the officer's.