Presidents Message

I hope that everyone had a great summer and your school year is off to a good start. Thank you to Justin Daale for a phenomenal DARE Conference in LeMars this July. Now that we’re over a month into the school year and hopefully settled in, I wanted to send out a note looking forward to the upcoming year.

As the IDOA president for this year, I’ll tell you all a little about myself. I have been with the Warren County Sheriff’s Office for 9 years and have taught DARE since I’ve been here. I am not only second generation law enforcement but also a second generation DARE instructor. My dad was a deputy in Jasper County and taught DARE for 10 years, so it is definitely in my blood.

The 2023 DARE conference will be held in Indianola from July 9-11, 2023. I am excited to bring the conference back to central Iowa and am looking for a great turnout. We are going to be using Hotel Pommier as our main hotel with 40 rooms available. When those rooms are booked, I will send out information for everyone else who still needs to book their room. Please call Hotel Pommier (515-961-0551)as soon as you are able and make sure you tell them you are there for the DARE Conference and give them the promo code DARE22 to get the discounted rate for our block of rooms.

Indianola is a great place to visit during the summer, so hopefully many of you can come and bring your families. Indianola has many great restaurants and venues to check out. Warren County has two state parks, eleven county parks, and two bike trails that connect to bike trails in the metro. Indianola is also only 15 minutes south of Des Moines.

The theme this year is DARE to be a Leader. We had some great essays submitted last year and our winner was phenomenal. I am looking forward to reading the essays again this year. We have some great kids who we get the opportunity to teach and these are the leaders of the future. DARE is just one of the classes that helps build kids into leaders.

I will send out more information for the conference later on in the school year. I hope you all are well and feel free to reach out to me with anything you need.

Deputy Cameron Van Zante

DARE Instructor

Warren County Sheriff's Office

P.O. Box 337

Indianola, Iowa 50125

Office: 515-961-1122

Fax: 515-961-1025