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Peach’s involvement earns him Citizen of the Year

Dan Peach, Blooming Prairie
Blooming Prairie’s Citizen of the Year, Dan Peach, salutes the Color Guard during the Fourth of July parade last summer. Peach is a police officer in BP. Staff photo by Kay Fate
By
Kay Fate, Staff Writer
“… It’s for the betterment of our community when we all work together.”
-Dan Peach, BP Citizen of Year

If you can’t see why Dan Peach was selected as the 2024 Citizen of the Year by the Blooming Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce, you aren’t looking very hard.

“When Dad bought the store, I was only in elementary school, so I’d come down here all the time,” Peach said of his childhood.

Though he was born and raised in Owatonna, his dad has owned B to Z Hardware since 2004. Peach worked at the store throughout high school and college.

“I just got to meet everyone in town,” he said. “It really was because of the store – I’m sure that’s how I met even the chief.”

That would be Blooming Prairie Police Chief Greg Skillestad, who hired Peach right out of college as a part-time police officer in 2015.

“I honestly only planned to work here a year or two, get some experience, then go off to the big city,” Peach said. “I figured Blooming Prairie hired me, so I’d give them a couple of years, since they were giving me a shot.”

There were no full-time positions available on the department, so Peach was looking at a job with Owatonna Police or the Steele County Sheriff’s Office.

But in 2017, the overnight position in BP opened – and so did the opportunity to become a full-time deputy with the Waseca County Sheriff’s Office.

“I sat on it for a while,” Peach said of the options. “My heart kept telling me to stay in Blooming – so I did, and I don’t regret that decision one bit.”

So much so, his hope now is to one day succeed Skillestad as chief of police.

“That’s the goal,” he said, “and I hope that happens someday. I have no issues spending my career here.”

In addition to his professional life, Peach has devoted much of his personal life to the residents of Blooming Prairie.

He has been a volunteer EMT for the BP Ambulance Service since 2015, becoming the first “sleeper” at the new ambulance garage.

He is currently a CPR instructor for the service and is instrumental in the current recruitment push to shore up the number of responders available for medical calls.

“We can’t seem to get over that little hump of always needing people,” Peach said of the service. “I want to be a big advocate, because Blooming Prairie leans elderly. With age, there are increases in medical issues, and I just worry about having enough” people to help.

“I don’t want to lose our ambulance – that scares me,” he said. “If we ever lost the ambulance service, the chance of getting it back is probably zero; you have to keep maintaining, then moving forward. That’s something I can help out with on a local level, keep pushing for recruitment.”

He serves on multiple boards, both locally and regionally, and has received the FBI-LEEDA Trilogy Award for completing courses in law enforcement leadership and management.

Peach seems most in his element at community events, most notably, his holiday celebrations in the vacant lot where the bakery once stood.

“I just had a vision, and I said, ‘this would be a really cool pumpkin patch.’ I’d never heard of one in a downtown before,” he said. “You always had to go out in the country.”

So he brought in giant games, bounce houses and hundreds of pumpkins, among other family-friendly activities.

“It’s the perfect place to bring little kids, then walk downtown to see everything we have to offer,” Peach said.

He realized it was bringing in droves of out-of-towners, “so we got to bring a lot of people to our downtown – and that, I’m pretty proud of,” he said.

He continues to do Trunk or Treat at the lot around Halloween, drawing more participants every year.

Peach has also set up a Very Prairie Christmas display on the lot, in a nod to Cousin Eddie from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Other themes have included Love in the Prairie for Valentine’s Day and Have a Hoppy Easter, with visits from the Easter Bunny.

He served as president of the Blooming Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce in 2019-20.

As its newest Citizen of the Year, Peach was “just kind of taken off guard. It’s a very big honor, definitely very humbling.”

He and his wife Shelby were married in July 2023; she works as a 911 dispatcher in Mower County. They live in Blooming Prairie.

Peach’s view of the future includes continued growth in the community, “with more housing options and more businesses in town to grow the tax base, so we can continue to do projects.”

He hopes to continue serving the community “for many years ahead, both in law enforcement and in EMS, and on other groups or boards.”

He’s heard all the jokes about his youthful appearance. When people joke, he must have become a police officer at 12, he corrects them: “Actually, 11,” he says.

“The nice thing about a small town is that you know all the residents,” Peach said. “You have the rapport going and can have conversations” in difficult times.

“Lots of people in this town know who I am or have had some kind of interaction with me – hopefully in a positive manner – whether it’s at the store or the ambulance, so I’m not a complete stranger, and can help,” he said. “Such a big part of small-town policing is knowing histories and being able to read people.”

Peach credits the time spent in his dad’s hardware store with “helping my people skills. I wasn’t at home playing video games; I was actually able to interact with the community and have that face-to-face contact.”

All of his jobs, he said, have taught him the importance of listening, as well as the importance of explaining the “why” of things.

He offers some advice for others looking for a way to get involved:

“Take a leap and try something you might not think you’d like, or that seems scary,” Peach said. “You might like it, and it’s very rewarding doing things outside of your normal life.”

The leap, he said, “lets you interact with so many different people in the community and make so many more connections outside of work – and you might need that connection down the road.

“Not only that, but it’s for the betterment of our community when we all work together.”

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