Johnson County native and BV West alum, Kendall Schoenekase, was crowned Miss Kansas on June 11, 2016. She plans to take the stage at the Miss America 2017 – and win.

     The reason behind all of Schoenekase’s hard work is her personal experience with texting and driving in 2014. She was a passenger in a car when the driver got out her phone to text, and lost focus of the road. The car crossed over the centerline of the road resulting in a three car pile-up. A girl in one of the cars to be injured.

     Shoenekase began speaking out about texting and driving even before becoming Miss Kansas. Now that she has the title she passes out wristbands saying “it can wait,” and recorded a video to further popularize and hopefully solve the issue.

The beauty queen visited lunches on August 22 in the hope of spreading the word about texting and driving. Shoenekase also hoped that her alma mater would support her in her quest to become Miss USA. Those wishing to help her with her dream can vote on Facebook at:

HTTP://MISSAMERICA.ORG/VOTE or HTTP://BIT.LY/MISSAMERICA2017