Student campaign brings Petty to Columbia

It started off as a passing comment. Public relations instructor Lisa Sisk jokingly told senior Morgan Castano that, for her class project, she ought to bring in Kyle Petty. After all, her campaign project had been focused on Petty’s annual Charity Ride Across America.

Just a few weeks later, the NASCAR driver was standing in front of a filled classroom, helping Castano put the finishing touches on her final project.

“I’m proud of her for getting him here, but I’m even more proud of the work that she’s done for her campaign,” Sisk said. “It’s huge in both scope and depth, far beyond what a lot of my students do.”

Castano, a public-relations major from Charlotte, spent last summer working with Kyle Petty Charities on the yearly cross-country ride that raises money for the Victory Junction Gang Camp.

Petty and his family created the camp five years ago as a way to honor the memory of his son, Adam, and to help children with medical issues. More than 3,600 children already have benefitted from the organization’s work.

“The camp is an extension of what the Petty brand stands for,” Petty said. “We built it, but we never envisioned that it would grow the way it did.”

After doing an internship with the organization last summer, Castano used her experience to put together a viable awareness campaign for her Journalism 531 class. Her work focused on raising awareness of what the Victory Junction Gang Camp is as well as how to support the camp through the annual motorcycle trek across America.

For Castano, the chance to work with children in need was the experience she had been seeking. Early in college, she had considered changing her major to special education, so her campaign’s focus encompassed many of her personal goals.

“When I got this internship, I thought, ‘I can do everything I want to do. I can incorporate public relations into helping children who are really in need,’” Castano said.

Now in its 14th year, the Kyle Petty Charity Ride started as a means of raising funds for children’s hospitals across the country. When Petty and his family opened the Victory Junction Gang Camp, the money raised began going to provide medical and other services for children during their stay at the camp.

For Petty, having a place where children and their families could go and doing the fundraising just went hand-in-hand.

“It gives these children a place to come and be the kids they can be,” Petty said. “Basically, that’s what the camp is. The camp is a hospital kind of disguised as a camp.”

With the support of numerous celebrities and corporate organizations, Petty’s charitable ride alone has raised more than $12 million for his camp.

Petty plans to build another camp in Kansas City that will help alleviate the overcrowding at his North Carolina camp. His hope is to use Castano’s campaign as a way of getting the word out Kyle Petty Charities and the work involved.

“I think for us, any time you can bring in a fresh set of eyes to look at a problem you’ve been looking at for a long period of time, it kind of changes everything,” Petty said. “The best part about working with the college here and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications is you take fresh ideas. These kids and these people see things different.”