For Evan Kobley, it has always been about working with people.

“It sort of started in fourth grade, when I first had a community service requirement in school,” Kobley said.

The 17-year-old is the recent recipient of an Arizona State Youth Volunteer award from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Moreover, his work has also won the Seven State Southwest Regional award, and at the end of June, he and his family will travel to Washington, D.C., so that he can receive national DAR honors for his service to veterans.

Kobley and his family live in Scottsdale, but he has close ties with Fountain Hills. His mother, Henrietta Kobley, is a member of the local Four Peaks chapter of DAR, and it was the Four Peaks chapter that nominated him for the Service to Veterans Youth Volunteer award.

Kobley’s work has taken several forms over the years since fourth grade, intensifying once he started high school. He joined the Veterans Heritage Project, a program of interviewing and recording veterans’ memories about their service. These priceless memoirs are collected and forwarded to the Library of Congress, forming a unique store of information and perspective. Kobley has conducted three such interviews thus far and hopes to do more.

He also turned to Honor Flight, the program providing free transportation to Washington and its war memorials to veterans. Kobley raised money to send Arizona veterans on a flight and served as a guardian in April 2019, providing personal help to a participant making the trip.

But the hardest work came before and during the pandemic-depth years of 2020-2021, when Kobley became the president of the Arizona Children of the American Revolution (CAR), an organization for those under 18 who can trace their ancestry to a supporter of the Revolution. Like DAR and the Sons of the American Revolution, CAR is a non-political service organization, and State CAR presidents are required to carry out a project during their leadership years.

For his project,Kobley looked back at his more recent ancestry and found a great grandfather who was a former manager of the Philadelphia and New York City symphonic orchestras. He decided that his project would seek to marry those unable to go to symphonic concerts with those who suddenly had no concerts to perform.

“I wanted to do something that could reach a lot of people,” he said, “especially those who were helping during the pandemic.”

Kobley started traveling around Arizona, speaking to DAR chapters and other organizations mostly virtually, buying and reselling patriotic items, holding raffles and auctions of art pieces and looking for donations wherever he could find them. In all, he spoke to 52 groups and raised $31,000 while working with area professional orchestras to provide what he called, “Hero Concerts,” to veterans, shut-ins and first responders.

Kobley’s mother said she watched her son, “step up to the plate,” as he carried out his project, making live events happen as he had been planning for over a year, despite pandemic limitations. The Phoenix Symphony held a healing concert in April 2021 to help those with PTSD and other ailments at a Fountain Hills senior facility, and the Flagstaff orchestra held a live Fourth event the same year using some of Kobley’s funding.

Kobley’s mother said the biggest benefit to her son that she witnessed was the boost to his public speaking skills. She mentioned that sibling rivalry probably helped push him since his older sister, Lauren, is also a successful fundraiser.

Over the last five years, Kobley has logged some 670 hours of service to veterans. He said that receiving the Arizona Daughters award during the 120th State Conference on May 14 was a bit overwhelming.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a large event. I wasn’t expecting anything like that,” Kobley said.

Wait until he gets to Washington, where the 131st Continental Congress of the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution will be the first in-person convention for that organization in three years.

Meanwhile, Kobley still has one more year at Notre Dame Preparatory High School. His college plans aren’t solid yet, although he wants to be somewhere that allows him to play lacrosse.

“I want to continue what I’ve been doing,” Kobley said, who plans to keep working with the Veterans Heritage Project, collaborating on other work with veterans and plans to study psychology. “It fits, because it’s about working with others.”