Like too many young, bright and ambitious high school graduates, Dustin Ritchea fled from Northwest Indiana to share his skills and talents with the world. Sociologists call it brain drain, and our region suffers greatly from it.
These promising products from our corner of the state typically return only to visit their family and friends, or for holidays, not to settle down, raise a family and retire. I’ve written about so many of them through the years, happy to share their stories but disappointed they chose to make a life elsewhere.
And then I was introduced to Ritchea, who was born in Valparaiso, grew up in the town of Porter and graduated from Chesterton High School in 2009. He left our area to earn degrees in theater and English from Augsburg University in Minnesota, as well as a master’s degree in telecommunications from Indiana University.
“As a millennial, I had bought into the idea of monetary success and societal prestige,” Ritchea said. Like my contemporaries, I had dreams of making a difference – and I still do – but my vision was askew.”
After graduating from college, he returned home for a summer to work as a project management scheduling consultant for Mobile Creative Solutions Inc. He also worked at both Parkdale Recovery Center and Premier Performance in Chesterton as a therapeutic dramatist and vocal/acting coach, respectively.
“I decided I wanted to use my degree more, so I moved to Kalamazoo, Mich., to work for The Gilmore, the nonprofit organization behind the Gilmore Keyboard Festival,” he said. “It’s a biannual piano festival bringing together some of the world’s greatest pianists.”
There, he worked for one year as a digital marketing coordinator, and began freelancing as a videographer and photographer.
“One week before I started my job, my father was diagnosed with stage four adenocarcinoma,” Ritchea said. “I traveled home every other weekend.”
His father’s form of cancer was able to be managed with a pill form of chemotherapy, he said, allowing them to start a classic rock band called Duneside Classic Rewind. Their time together hit all the right notes for Ritchea, who began missing his family.
After nearly seven years away from Northwest Indiana, he came to a conclusion.
“During my time away, I realized a few things about myself,” he said. “I realized I wanted to be closer to my loved ones.”
Another key factor came into play. His girlfriend of four years was offered a job at the new StoryPoint senior living facility in Chesterton. Ritchea began looking for a job, and a life, back in this area.
“Success is not owning a multimillion dollar company. It is doing the next right thing,” he said. “I think what I realized was that to achieve my vocation, I have to look within, not without.”
He shared with me a favorite quote from Frederick Buechner, the 91-year-old theologian: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Ritchea took this to heart.
“As a millennial trying to find my place in the world, with student debt and an uncertain future, the best I can do is put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, to make a difference in someone else’s life,” said Ritchea, who’s now 28.
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“When I worked at Parkdale Recovery Center in Chesterton, I was making a difference one person at a time,” he recalled.
Last year, he applied for the position of promotions director for Indiana Dunes Tourism in Chesterton. After going through a tough vetting process, he was hired.
“I’m helping local businesses grow and succeed, the same businesses I went to as a child with my grandparents,” he said. “I’m an actor, writer, producer and songwriter, and I was given these gifts to entertain people. Working in marketing in my hometown allows me to do just that. That’s why I moved home, and I’m happy to be here.”
Samantha Atkins has a similar story arc, though she landed 45 minutes east of this area.
Atkins, a Merrillville High School graduate, left Northwest Indiana to attend Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in downstate Terre Haute, where she earned a degree in biomedical engineering.
Then she attended Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis for her master’s degree in biomedical engineering, working in the Orthopedic Research Department of the IU School of Medicine.
“Throughout my life, my research career has been motivated through personal experiences and loss,” Atkins said.
When she was in high school, her mother was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
“I was determined to study this incurable autoimmune disease to better understand the etiology and mechanisms underlying this devastating condition,” Atkins said.
During her master’s degree research, her father died.
“My entire world was changed, and my Ph.D. work was motivated by his loss,” she said.
That research work took place at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, where she now lives with her husband, Joe, and their three dogs, Darwin, Watson and Franklin, all named after scientists.
“My focus has been on understanding the relationship between incurable diseases… and the potential to generate cures, or to change the mode of patient care from a clinical standpoint,” she said.
Last month she earned her Ph.D. from Notre Dame, and next month she will begin a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School, working on a project combining tissue engineering and artificial intelligence to cure cardiovascular diseases.
“In terms of disease, the field of heart valves is stuck in the 1950s as compared to something like cancer,” she said. “There is still so much to discover.”
Her dream is to one day win a Nobel Prize in medicine.
“I’ve set lofty goals for myself, but ultimately I want to change the world,” Atkins said.
At 30, she already is, and so is Ritchea, just two examples of homegrown kids who’ve remembered their roots, and their dreams.
