Face to Face: Kelly Shoemaker, owner of Wirenuts in Tonganoxie
Name: Kelly Shoemaker
Born: Lawrence
Family: Wife, Lynn Clark-Shoemaker; sons, Garrett, 12, seventh-grader, and Justin, 10, fifth-grader.
Occupation: Owner of Wirenuts Security, Tonganoxie.
Dream job as a child: Professional monster truck driver
Interesting fact: Shoemaker’s family used to have 20 alpacas. They sheared the alpacas and used the fiber for projects. They’ve also had cows, chickens, turkeys and pigs, and currently have a horse and cow on their 10-acre farm in rural Linwood.
Digging deeper: After graduating from Lawrence High School in 1993, he worked at a heating and cooling company in rural Lawrence until July 1995. Shoemaker then went to work for a local Lawrence security company.
“I worked my way up from the bottom of the ladder to general manager over the security division and was in charge of several employees and ran several jobs for the company,” Shoemaker said.
In April 2004, Shoemaker decided to leave the company and start his own business in his hometown of Tonganoxie.
Since 2004, Wirenuts has been at the northwest corner of Fourth and Main streets in Tonganoxie. The security company, which also does wiring for various electronics, including cameras, access control and home theaters, has customers from Manhattan to portions of Missouri. He’s even done jobs in places such as Vail, Colo., and Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.
His hobbies include coaching baseball, volleyball and basketball for the couple’s two sons and their friends. And a personal hobby is fishing “as much as I can while running a small business and trying to restore an older vehicle,” Shoemaker said.
His project is a a 1963 Buick Riviera.
Shoemaker is involved in various organizations. He also likes to donate to groups such as Tonganoxie Recreation Commission and the Eudora Parks and Recreation.
“We like to do donations like that,” he said.