Starts with K

Sometimes, you just need to ask the right question.

I’ve experienced it over and over again in my career – and I’m usually pleasantly surprised by the answer.

It was the case again last week, when Jolayne Mohs gave me a tour of Oak Hill Community Connections, a facility that will house multiple community resources under one roof – relieving at least one hurdle to getting the right help to the people who need it.

It seemed like a daunting task: Take a 63,000-square-foot former medical clinic that was built 70 years ago, with multiple additions, and fix it.

Oh – and raise $4 million for the work, gather as many critical nonprofits as you can, solicit help from busy community volunteers – and do it while still working and raising your family.

“What made you like this?” I asked Mohs, in that delicate style I have.

Her answer was equal parts philosophical, pragmatic and visionary.

“I know I didn’t get here by myself,” she said. “I had teachers that believed in me; I had coaches, I had parents, I had employers … nobody gets through this life on their own.”

Mohs worked in the mental health field when she moved to Owatonna about 20 years ago, “and I learned a lot about humanity.”

She also did a lot of work within the child protection system, “and those families are some of the hardest-working, grittiest, hard-loving people I’ve ever met. Does it look different than my experience? Yes, it does. But do they love their kids any less? Absolutely not,” she said.

Mohs said she knows a thing or two about struggles.

Things were tight when she and her husband Scott Mohs first started Mohs Contracting.

“We have lived experiences that are very similar to these families,” she said of potential clients at Oak Hill Community Connections. The facility will help individuals and families experiencing housing insecurity, physical and mental health needs, food insecurity, inadequate or no employment and more.

“I know exactly what it’s like to show up and on your front door you’ve got the neon yellow utility sign that says, ‘you’ve got 48 hours.’ We’ve lived that experience, and we lived it with babies,” Mohs said.

Eventually, the business took off – it is now instrumental in large projects across southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, from apartment buildings to fire stations to commercial buildings.

But: “Our first paid job that we ever had as a company was a trash enclosure,” Mohs said. “Scott built a fence around a Dumpster. We drive by it at least 10 times a day, because it’s near where we live. We don’t talk about it as much anymore, but we never, ever take it for granted. Ever.”

Now, she said, she and her husband are firm believers that “because this community has been very, very good to us, now it is our responsibility to take care of others.

“Mohs Contracting has been successful building houses,” she said. “That’s what we do. We build. We shelter people through their businesses; we shelter people in their houses and their apartments – so it is our responsibility to help shelter the people that don’t have the financial resources or the skill set at the time to do it themselves.”

Her father played a role in her approach, too.

“He told me, ‘if you have opinions, you have to have skin in the game.’ What are you going to do about it? You can’t just run around with opinions” and nothing to back them, Mohs said.

This project, she said, is her skin in the game.

“I am of the belief that this is going to change the trajectory of our community,” she said.

Because nobody gets through this life on their own.

To donate to Oak Hill, visit www.oakhillcc.care/campaign.