Read more stories of acts of kindness in the November/December 2025 feature.
When a nasty winter storm slammed the region in early January, members of the Evansville Area Jeepers club did as they’ve done several times in years past: used their all-wheel drive vehicles to provide a unique ride-share experience.
Neither snowy conditions nor icy roads could keep about 30 EAJ members from transporting health care professionals from home to work, says club president Ryan Sermersheim. “We let (drivers) know that it is 100 percent volunteer,” he says. “You’re on your own for gas and any risk to your vehicle.” That risk, according to the National Weather Service in Paducah, Kentucky, included navigating up to 0.49 inches of freezing rain and around five inches of snow that fell Jan. 5-6.
Not long after the club’s 2014 inception, members created Operation Snowflake, which offers free rides to the employees most in need at hospitals and other medical centers. When inclement weather hits and roads become treacherous, volunteers sign up on EAJ’s Facebook page to chauffeur health care workers, including doctors, nurses, specialists, and cafeteria cooks.
The group’s procedure has been fine-tuned over the years to where both Deaconess and Ascension St. Vincent health systems connect with the club and share a list of personnel requesting a ride to their workplace. EAJ members then comment on which pick-ups they can make.
This past winter, close to 150 trips were made by club members, Sermersheim says. Areas covered stretched outside Evansville and Newburgh, Indiana, into Posey County and Southeastern Illinois, as well as Kentucky communities such as Robards and Morganfield, says Dawson McIntosh, an EAJ administrator. “For three or four days, we had a busy group chat on Facebook,” Sermersheim says of the club’s 7,200-member social media page.
McIntosh recalls a trip where he picked up a surgery scheduler. “She did that for the entire ER. It’s a pretty crucial role,” he says.
Another Operation Snowflake passenger “was the on-call radiologist for Deaconess Midtown. She said she would be the only radiologist there that day,” Sermersheim says. “I picked her up at 4 a.m. for her 5 a.m. shift. At one point, I had to go slightly into a ditch because there was a tree in the road, but she made it in.”
For EAJ, Operation Snowflake is the tip of the iceberg. It holds car show fundraisers — like EAJ Backs the Blue — throughout the year to support charities and community groups such as Cops Connecting with Kids.
“Initially, some of us joined the club just to go out to off-road parks and tear it up,” McIntosh says, “but we soon realized we could do something to give back to the community.”
