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Southwestern Michigan College’s criminal justice students returned from the 2025 Skills USA-MI Skills and Leadership Conference April 11-13 in Grand Rapids with two gold medals, one silver medal and one bronze medal.

In the Criminal Justice competition, Kaden Sandora won gold, Graciana Smith won silver and Walker Karafa won bronze.

In the Crime Scene Investigation competition, the team of Tia Cornelieus, Levi Morey and Ayshia Smith brought home the gold medal. 

SMC’s medalists represent a good cross-section of the possibilities criminal justice offers, from a prospective state trooper and aspiring attorney to two interested in being conservation officers.

“I want to work in the courts more than corrections, policing or investigating,” said Smith, “but this will make me a more well-rounded attorney. The law is nuanced. I like how it’s not black-and-white, with little intricacies within the law. There’s so much critical thinking and storytelling involved, like journalism. The Constitution stays the same, but the law is malleable, always evolving. I like that we have an adversarial system as opposed to an inquisitorial system.”

Smith interned at Whirlpool with the in-house counsel last summer and was surprised to learn that “a lot of them in the corporate legal department were English majors.
“This summer I’ll be working as a paid attorney’s assistant filing paperwork, answering phone calls and dropping stuff off at the courthouse for a law firm with offices in St. Joseph and Niles.”

Smith, who lives in Eau Claire and attended Niles High School, graduates from SMC this spring, then continues through Ferris State University this fall for her bachelor’s degree.

Graciana Smith is a Ferris State senior graduating in December from the criminal justice program. She was dual-enrolled in high school, so cruised quickly through SMC.

“I want to be a conservation officer,” Smith said. “I’m going to go to the state police academy, become a state police officer, then move laterally.”

She is from Niles, but graduated from Edwardsburg High School.

“I grew up always outside, in nature, so I want to be able to protect that,” Smith said.

Sandora, a Dowagiac graduate and 2024 bronze medalist, wants to be an MSP trooper.

“Right now I work for the Michigan State Police as a cadet through the Niles post,” he said. “In January, I’ll go to the five-month academy. I was always that little kid who wanted to be a cop and it evolved from that to actually doing it.”

Karafa, a dual-enrolled Edwardsburg student from Niles, also wants to pursue becoming a conservation officer.

“I’ll be transferring to Northern Michigan University” from SMC, Karafa said, “for a bachelor’s in fisheries and wildlife management for a career with the DNR (Department of Natural Resources).”

The Michigan Conservation Officer Academy is a 23-week training program in Roscommon that prepares new conservation officers for law-enforcement careers.

“I grew up hunting and fishing all over Cass and Berrien,” Karafa said. “My dad always told me it’s a job protecting something that can’t protect itself. We can’t gain back anything that’s lost.”

“I’m happy the college gave us this opportunity,” Karafa said. “I feel like I gained a lot of experience and respect for the field. I went in there with the mindset of wanting to learn from this. Critique me. What could I do better in this situation? I learned so much I’m happy I went through the experience.”

Criminal Justice involved individual competition around five scenarios, such as a 911 hang-up call, a misdemeanor arrest, a traffic stop for speeding, a victim impact statement and a mock job interview.

“I was a little nervous and anxious, but I felt prepared,” Graciana said.

They have been training since September every Tuesday afternoon with Cass County Sheriff’s Office deputies.

Ayshia said the scene her team processed included fingerprints, swabs, sketching, measurements and photos for blood splatter, logging who entered and left and a written report for a scenario that involved a body found floating in a river.

“The scene looked disheveled, and there was a fake tooth on the ground,” Ayshia noted.

The wall outside Program Director Dr. Donald Ricker’s office in the Foster W. Daugherty Building is shingled with 26 SkillsUSA plaques, including a three-year sweep in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

This was the first time since 2019 that SMC won the CSI competition.

SMC’s momentum stalled in the first half of the 2020s due to the COVID-19 pandemic interruption, but it appears back on track.

“I’m happy and proud,” said Ricker, a former detective who joined SMC in 2014. “They put in a lot of work since the first week of school.”

Another proud moment for Ricker was encountering two former students with the MSP who served as judges for the traffic-stop scenario — 2017 medalist Joseph Seidler from St. Joseph and 2023 medalist Ryan Peterson from South Haven.