Mackenzie Brungard doesn't remember a time when engines and tools weren't part of the scenery. Her grandpa drives a semi. Her uncle drove one, too. Growing up in Vandalia, she was always kind of around it — the mechanical rhythm of people who work with their hands and keep things running.

But the moment something shifted from background noise to genuine interest came through her older brother. When he was taking auto mechanics classes, he'd come home and work on his cars — and he'd ask Mackenzie to help. She was maybe ten or eleven at the time.

"I helped him put brakes on his car," she says.

It wasn't a transmission rebuild. But for a fifth grader, it was enough to light something up.

That spark carried Mackenzie into the auto mechanics program at the OKAW Area Vocational Center, where Vandalia students can cross the parking lot into a completely different kind of classroom. The first year is book work — parts identification, tools, and the logic of how systems function. By the second semester, you're in the shop, hands-on, with instructor Jason Ruot walking you through the real thing.

Mackenzie thrived. She'll tell you she thought she knew more going in than she actually did, and that the structured learning filled in the gaps. "I feel like it definitely taught me a lot," she says.

But the program didn't just teach her. It connected her.

Ruot put in a good word for Mackenzie at Rock Bottom Tire, a shop in the area. Toby Dothager, the power mechanics instructor, helped her get sharper on tire work. By the time she walked in for her first shift, she was more ready than she expected.

"I picked it up in less than a week," she says. "I knew nothing about tires before I started."

Now she's a tire and lube technician — changing oil, mounting and balancing tires, learning the fine points of weight placement and rim types. She heads to Rock Bottom straight from school most days. And the job isn't going anywhere: the owner is building a bigger facility and expanding into alignments, brakes, and suspension work. Mackenzie plans to grow with it.

She drives a 2011 Chrysler 200 and works on it herself. She can't quite afford new tires yet — but when she does, she'll mount them on her own.

And yes, she stands out. In a field still dominated by men, Mackenzie is matter-of-fact about it.

"I think it makes me stand out a lot more," she says. "I have people coming to work all the time saying, it's crazy seeing a woman in there working."

She doesn't perform that observation. She just keeps working.

When asked what she'll remember most about her time at Vandalia, Mackenzie doesn't hesitate. It's OKAW — the connections she built there, the network that stretches across multiple school districts, the instructors who saw what she could do and helped her find a place to do it.

She's seventeen, and she already has a career underway, mentors in her corner, and a skill set that goes wherever she goes.

Not bad for someone who started out by handing her brother a wrench.