"This feels like home."

Jesse Ward wants to be a police officer.

With police jobs in short supply in Michigan, Jesse and his wife, Amy, visited the two places where he thought he might be able to get a job on a local force -- Arizona and Kentucky.

The travel experiences were eye-opening. Jesse and Amy both realized how much would miss friends and family if they moved away.

“I felt lost in Phoenix,” said Amy, “and it really hit me in Kentucky. You can pick up the phone, but it’s not the same, knowing you can’t just get in your car and go see your folks.”

After those trips, the Wards weren’t anxious to see new parts of the country. They didn’t want to move. They just wanted to move on. The change of scenery helped them realize they were tired of the apartment and duplex life -- something they both had experienced from their late teens through early 20s.. The apartment life was less than ideal, too, for their wedding present to each other -- a German Shepherd puppy named Schafer.

Not long after they got married last year, Jesse and Amy took Schafer out on a walk from their duplex and got a glimpse of the Allen Edwin Ashton Farms West neighborhood in Portage. They were shocked to learn how far their “hard-earned, small paychecks” could go toward home ownership.

“It did get us thinking,” said Jesse. “In addition to being tired of being too close to our neighbors, we didn’t like paying rent.” Surprised by their buying power, the Wards were even more surprised by how “stress free” it was to buy and build a home.

“We had heard nightmares about offers, counter offers and all kinds of stipulations that go into buying a house. With us, we made a decision quickly, the house started going up, and here we are,” said Jesse.

Where they are, interestingly, is in a community similar to those they knew in their youth -- places their folks still live. The Wards looked at three Allen Edwin communities before settling into the Prairies at Centennial in Vicksburg. As it turns out, the Wards knew their neighbors even before their house was finished. Amy had known two of the couples through work, “and we met our next door neighbors two months before we moved in,” she said.

The unseasonably warm fall weather turned their Prairies at Centennial streets into a daily parade of baby carriages amidst the sandlot baseball feel created by young families out in their yards. “In some ways, this is a young neighborhood -- and people love the Vicksburg schools -- but we’re meeting some people, too, whose children are grown. We like the neighborhood feel. It feels like home,” adds Amy.

Home, though, is taking a lot of work. Painting walls ‘til 3 a.m. Moving in furniture. Yard duty. Both sets of parents and siblings, though, have pitched in, coming down from the Grand Rapids area to help.

Jesse, meanwhile, is having a hard time making time to get out on his bicycle, which is more than a recreational pastime.

While waiting for his opportunity to join a local police force, Jesse has been working at Breakaway Bicycles. And he has continued his competitive bicycle racing, something he plans to do for years to come. He’s on a national, Colorado-based racing team. So, is Lance Armstrong his hero?

“He’s something, no doubt about it,” says Jesse, “but no, my folks are my heroes. I look at everything they did for me, and my sister, and I realize I owe them a lot.”

Jesse has fond memories of going on a family vacation to Colorado when he was 11. “We were introduced to bike riding and when we got home, dad got bikes for all of us,” he said. Jesse’s father also took up competitive bicycling and the two love both road racing and off-road racing. Amy, too, has a road bike and a trail bike and enjoys the sport.

Amy works at the Educational Community Credit Union. With no shortage of interests of her own, fixing up the new house is now in the mix. The house also clears the path for family planning, and the street appears to have room for another baby carriage.

Jesse, though, hasn’t given up on his dream of being a police officer. He serves in the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department Reserve. He went through the six-month reserve academy and “loved it.” Jesse continues to pursue a full-time police job because “it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Being able to help people in their time of most desperate need is what really solidified that decision for me,” he said.

“It will be another big step,” he says, “but I think we’re ready for it.”