Wienke receives prestigious cadet award from Civil Air Patrol

Published 4:51 pm Thursday, July 23, 2015

As boys, Moritz Wienke and his brother used to play soccer at Marymoor Park in King County near Redmond.

During this time, they discovered the model airfield where people flew their radio-controlled model airplanes.

This sparked an interest in aviation and a few years later — when he turned 12 — Wienke joined the local branch of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), the Overlake Composite Squadron (OCS) in Redmond.

“I joined right on my 12th birthday since the requirement (to join) is 12 years old,” he said.

Wienke, who was born in the Bay Area in California before his family moved up to Sammamish when he was about 7 years old and now lives in Renton, has been with OCS since, working his way up the ranks as a cadet. After five years, the 17-year-old reached the rank of cadet commander, overseeing all of the cadets in the OCS program. In addition, Wienke also received the Gen. Ira C. Eaker Award, which less than 2 percent of CAP cadets nationwide have received since it was created in 1995. Wienke received the award about a month ago and is the 2,885th CAP cadet to receive the award. There are about 25,000 CAP cadets nationwide, who range from ages 12-21.

Wienke, who just graduated from Raisbeck Aviation High School in Tukwila, said the Eaker Award is the second-to-last promotion award a cadet can receive. According to the CAP website, Eaker Award recipients must receive all the prerequisite awards leading up to the Eaker Award, write a 300-500 word essay, present a five- to seven-minute speech to the unit on one of three pre-determined topics to be evaluated by a senior CAP member. Candidates for the award must also participate in a character-development forum, one of a number of pre-selected CAP activities and pass a fitness test.

For his pre-selected CAP activity, Wienke attended the CAP Cadet Officer School last summer. The school is located at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

“It’s well worth it,” he said about the experience.

During that time, Wienke said he learned a lot about how to lead others strategically, how to delegate and more.

Wienke said it’s been a good feeling to make it as far as he has and to receive the Eaker Award after all of the hard work he has put in during the last five years. As a cadet in his earlier years, he said he always looked up to the other lieutenant colonels in the cadet program and now he has been in that position for others to look up to him.

Maj. Mike Holliday, public affairs officer for OCS, remembers when Wienke joined OCS.

“He had super-long hair when he showed up,” Holliday said.

He described Wienke in those early days of OCS as real shy. But over the years Holliday said he has seen the teen become “a really outstanding young man” and an enthusiastic and high-achieving cadet, participating in various CAP activities on a national level such as the cadet officer school.

When Wienke took over as cadet commander, Holliday said he knew there would be no need for him to micromanage because the cadets would be in good hands.

“He was so organized,” Holliday said.

Over the years, Holliday has enjoyed Wienke’s growing leadership. He said Wienke has created such a positive environment for the cadets as well as the OCS staff. Holliday said Wienke is good at motivating others to do their best.

And while Wienke said receiving the Eaker Award has been great, it has been his entire experience with CAP and OCS that has stuck out for him.

Over the years, he said he has made some really close friends and has learned skills that will transfer when he attends Arizona State University come fall, where he plans to study business and entrepreneurship. He does not plan to join the military or become a pilot — as some young people who join the CAP do — but Wienke said skills he’s developed such as working with different types of people and marketing himself will still help him in the future.

“Those will be super beneficial,” Wienke said.