Storytellers: Chester the traveling cheetah

WESTMINSTER – ADAMS COUNTY – In Kathy Zook’s class at Hodgkins Elementary School in Westminster, she has a helper in the form of a world traveler who likes to teach kids about geography and world cultures.

“He’s been to the Vatican. He’s been to Holland. He’s been to Paris,” Zook said.

She is the Gifted and Talented teacher at Hodgkins. Zook wanted to find a way to get kids excited about places they’ve never been to. That’s when she found Chester.

“I walked by and he was right at eye level and he was a brand new animal, still had his tags on and I was like, oh, you’re rather cute,” Zook said.

Chester is a stuffed Cheetah that she has brought with her on trips around the United States and Europe.

“It started about 10 years ago,” Zook said. “Chester was off on his first adventure and he had to have his passport.”

Zook created a fake passport for Chester the Travelling Cheetah to collect real country visas stamped onto its empty pages.

“The custom guy in Frankfort was in a very bad mood and I thought Oh, this is not going to go well as I’m Chester with both of our passports and he looked at me and he goes “Was ist das?” Zook said. “I said, this is my classroom pet, will you stamp his passport, too? And, he goes, aw, he goes, get out of here.”

No matter where Chester goes, Zook says, he draws interest from the locals or other tourists.

“You know, (people) would just come up and talk to you. They either figure you’re crazy or there’s a story behind this.”

Over the years, friends and colleagues have brought Chester overseas.

“He going to go to Korea here in another month,” Zook said. “Then, he’s going to Costa Rica with the vice principal on her honeymoon.”

Hodgkins Elementary Assistant Principal Amber Velasquez says she convinced her husband-to-be to allow Chester to tag along.

“Well, Chester’s never been to Costa Rica. Why not bring him with us?” Velasquez said. “We would love for Chester to come with us on our honeymoon and participate in all of our activities. We plan to horseback ride, zip line.”

Sometimes, he comes back dirty.

“Especially travelling a long ways with him,” Zook said. “So, I have to take him to the dry cleaner, the spa. That’s the spa.”

Sometimes, he comes back damaged.

“I think I had one bad kid. He chopped off one of his whiskers,” Zook said. “I’m like, oh yeah; I know who it is, too.”

Sometimes, he almost never comes back at all.

“I have to tell you my friend, Amanda, she’s the music teacher here and she took him on a cruise to Alaska,” Zook said. “They left him with her son’s backpack in Seward, Alaska and they actually had to go back and get him.”

Amanda McPherson remembers it quite differently.

“It depends on who you ask,” McPherson said. “Some people say that Chester got left behind at one of the shops in one of the Alaskan towns. But, the reality is Chester is not a domesticated cat.”

McPherson says, for the record, that Chester walked off on his own because it was his birthday.

“He kind of left the room in the middle of the night to go find some more adult entertainment, shall we say,” McPherson said. “Next day, he was wearing sunglasses all day carrying around a bottle of aspirin. I’m just saying.”

Despite the fact that some of the tales and the stuffed animal are not real, the value of Chester is for Zook’s students.

“My kids, primarily in this area, (are) fairly economically challenged,” Zook said. “They don’t get anywhere else. They don’t get to go to too many other places and I wanted to encourage them to travel and broaden their horizons.”

Velasquez says she wants to take Chester on her honeymoon to help these kids learn about other cultures.

“For the students that might not have the ability to travel the world at some point in their life, they get to live vicariously through Chester,” Velasquez said.

10-year-old Jesus Terrazas says Chester makes geography more interesting.

“With Chester, we can actually relate to him and things that he might have done,” Jesus said. “It’s really fun to have him in our class.”

Chester’s pictures of his adventures are displayed around Zook’s room along with ticket stubs, brochures, and a journal of his travels.

“I feel like I’ve gone more places mentally but not physically,” Jesus said.

Kids like Jesus, Zook says, are more engaged in learning about the world through Chester.

“They can relate it directly to something instead of having them look up a place they know nothing about,” Zook said.

So far, Zook says Chester has made more than 25 trips overseas or around the country amassing more than 111,000 airlines miles.

“I don’t know where I’m going next,” Zook said. “I know he’ll go with me. He always goes.”

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