A Jim Thorpe woman will head to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to accept a Congressional medal for her mother, a retired Civil Air Patrol member.

Karliene "Korki" Vack, 62, said her mother, 89-year-old Hellenmerie "Rie" Walker, is excited for the honor.Congress passed a bill this summer honoring CAP members who assisted the United States during World War II.Walker joined the CAP at 16, and actively participated from 1942-44."I'm really looking forward to representing her at the ceremony," Vack said. "My mom was one of the first females to join the CAP. She lives in Idaho now, so I'll probably mail her medal to her."Walker said she can't remember why she joined the CAP, but remembers clearly the day the United States joined World War II."We lived in Oregon at the time and my mother and I had gone downtown," she said. "We got home to find security police on the front porch. We lived above American Break Shoe. We had to get federal identification to come and go from our own place because the brake yard was doing work for the government. The guard was there from then on."Her CAP squadron had 30 to 40 cadets who trained in airplane spotting, navigation, first aid and other skills."I was not good at airplane identification," said Walker, who also admitted she found listening to Morse code rather boring.During the war, the CAP was the only nonmilitary organization authorized by the federal government to fly.On the East Coast, pilots from CAP flew coastal patrols up to 100 miles looking for German submarines.The Army Air Corps had four B-25s and eight P-38s stationed at the Dalles Airport, where Walker was assigned to guard duty.Because she was in the CAP and one of the first 12 women in Oregon to work at a gas station, she was given the overage of the station's portion of gas stamps."We would all meet up and pool our resources and drive from Portland to the Dalles every weekend. You had to ride a ferry across to the island airport."Walker was stern when she was assigned to one of the B-25s."One of the crew from that B-25 came back from town after having some beers," she recalled. "He brought back a couple and wanted to show them through the airplane. I told him no. He came back with his commander, and I told him the same thing. He didn't like being told no by a snot-nosed girl who was no bigger than her gun."Walker left the CAP in 1944 when she got married. She joined again in 1979 after her husband died. In 1989, she also joined AmeriCorps VISTA, a national community service program. She was living in Jim Thorpe during the sesquicentennial and was named the official hostess for their festival in 1993.After a number of years, she moved back to Oregon to be close to family.Like her mother, Vack also joined the CAP. During her service, which began in 1960, she designed the first CAP float in the Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade."I went on Ranger training weekends," she said. "We used to go out in the woods and learn how to do first aid on people who were injured. One time we had to create a stretcher using our coats and some poles we cut. We weren't too good at spacing them because we picked the guy up, he fell through and got a big scratch on his back, and we really had to do first aid on him."Vack went straight into the Air Force after serving three years in the CAP. After basic training in Texas, she was transferred to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, then to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi.The CAP's current missions include emergency services, aerospace education and cadet programs. It flies more than 100,000 hours annually and maintains a fleet of more than 950 emergency service vehicles for training and mission support.