It was a typical Tuesday morning at the Eskew house as the children were getting ready for school when Jamie, Brooke’s mother and a kindergarten teacher at Killin Elementary School on Camp Foster, opened an email from the Exchange and read that Brooke won first place in the Army & Air Force Exchange Service’s You Made the Grade sweepstakes.
Wide-eyed and in awe, she told Brooke that she won the first-place prize—a $2,000 Exchange gift card.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate on my schoolwork today,” Brooke said excitedly.
The fourth-grader at Killin Elementary School and her family—father Gunnery Sgt. Phil Eskew, Expeditionary Firefighting & Rescue Operations Chief for Headquarters & Headquarters Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma; Jamie and her brother Brayden, second-grader—joined Headquarters and Support Battalion’s command team, Col. Jeffrey Hammond, commander, and Sgt. Maj. Brian Drechsler, senior enlisted leader; AAFES Pacific Region command team, Lt. Col. Michael Kovalchek, commander, and Sgt. Maj. Wayne Crudup, senior enlisted leader; David Swenson, Okinawa Exchange general manager and Tonja Norris, Camp Foster Exchange’s store manager, for the official presentation on Jan. 26.
“Brooke has always been a wonderful student…full of curiosity, ambition and very well-behaved,” Jamie said. “In fact, as her mom, I was able to witness her studious demeanor myself when she was a student in my first-grade class.”
Brooke’s favorite classes are writing and physical education. At the age of 9, she had some of her written pieces chosen for publication in both Stars and Stripes, an American military newspaper, and in the Department of Defense Education Activity’s Pacific Sun magazine in 2021.
The You Made the Grade program is one of many ways the Exchange gives back to the community. According to the DoDEA, military children change schools an average of three times more often than their counterparts and move six to nine times during their school years.
Brooke has earned a $5 Exchange gift card every grading period since 2017 by participating in the You Made the Grade program, which rewards students in first through 12th grades, to include home schooled students, who achieve at least a B average on their report cards. The gift cards include a mail-in entry form to a worldwide sweepstakes held in December and June for a chance to win a $2,000, $1,500 or $500 Exchange gift card.
According to Jamie, Brooke is going to have a difficult time spending $,2000. Brooke told her, “Mom, it’s going to be real tough seeing it go from $2,000 to $0 but it will be fun trying.”
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