Take a look.

Crispin Rea knew his older sister, Veronica, would catch her breath at what he held in his hands.

A laminated business card, encased in a glass frame. Their mother’s LINC business card.

“You have this?!” Veronica Rea gasped.

The card showed some wear, faded since Marie Rea died of cancer in 2009 at the age of 52. Veronica Rea wiped at tears as the card took her back to when their mother was Caring Communities site coordinator at Kansas City’s McCoy Elementary School, one of LINC’s revolutionary, pioneering programs during its early years in the 1990s.

She thought of her mom, “the hard work she put into LINC, and the kids she loved, and how LINC supported her.”

LINC found much of its early strength from people like Marie Rea, a volunteering parent who was working hard to improve her community. She took a frontline job for LINC at McCoy, and “LINC certified her,” Veronica Rea said. “They empowered her.”

They shared the moment with Sean Akridge, now LINC’s director of Caring Communities, who’d been a site coordinator with Marie Rea in LINC’s first decade.

Now celebrating its 33rd anniversary, LINC is witnessing a second generation of community leaders and community organizers who are building on the work of first-generation crusaders like Akridge and the Reas’ mother.

LINC was new when Akridge and Marie Rea first worked for LINC, building on the vision of LINC’s founder, Bert Berkley, to create a citizen-driven non-profit to improve the delivery of government and community social services.

LINC now has 55 Caring Community sites and multiple programs, and many of its new leaders — like Veronica Rea — are sons and daughters of LINC coordinators, or former students of LINC.

Other second generation champions have taken LINC-inspired career journeys — like Crispin Rea, who worked in the Mayor’s Office out of college, won a seat on the Kansas City School Board in his early 20s, and is now the 4th District-at-Large City Councilmember for Kansas City.

Crispin Rea found his mother’s business card when sorting through things after her death. He tucked it into his wallet, then laminated it. His wife recently put it into the glass frame for his keeping.

“My mom set an example for me, growing up in a neighborhood that was pretty tough,” he said.  “High crime. Lots of drugs. Gangs. The whole thing.

“Through LINC,” he said, “I got to see her provide all kinds of services . . . All of that set me on this trajectory of public service.”

LINC was fortunate that Marie Rea was a McCoy Elementary parent, Akridge said, because she was able to bring her ambitions in community service onto LINC’s radar. LINC in its first years didn’t have sites in all of the Kansas City Public Schools elementaries as it does now, but was pioneering a new concept of the community school in a few of the district’s schools.

McCoy Elementary, at 1524 White Ave. in Kansas City’s Blue Valley neighborhood, was the site that out-of-state visitors came to see as a model for their own community school visions, Akridge said. It was led by a strong and innovative principal, Jo Nemeth, backed by a passionate site council of community members.

When the school district turned to LINC to start community school before- and after-school programs at all of its elementary schools, LINC looked to its frontline staff and the community to fill leadership positions, and Marie Rea was promoted to the lead role at McCoy.

“McCoy truly was a community school, the first in Kansas City that brought services literally into the building,” Akridge said. “It was obvious that Marie was a great selection for that community for the work she’d already done with Jo Nemeth and (former LINC coordinator) George Cooper, and the families, and how the teachers loved her.

“That was a true great perfect fit,” he said, “of wrap-around services by a person who wrapped her heart around everyone she met.”

Marie Rea had not extended her education beyond high school and was a parent raising children and active in her community when her volunteer work at McCoy led to a job at LINC, Veronica Rea said. LINC trained her for the professional role waiting her.

“She was very, very happy,” she said. “My mom loved the kids. My mom loved giving back to the whole community.”

In the years that followed, Veronica, who is nine years older than her brother, got to bring her young children to McCoy and her mother’s LINC programs. Crispin, as a teenager, was becoming a youth leader, taking part in anti-gang efforts. He remembered moments while talking with Akridge, including when the teenaged Crispin joined the LINC and community advocates who loaded up on buses to join the crowds at Youth Advocacy Day at the Capitol in Jefferson City.

“So much of where I am now leads back to the work she did with LINC,” Crispin Rea said.

Now, at the suggestion of her younger brother, Veronica Rea has joined LINC to be a coordinator like her mother. It’s given her a chance to see how much LINC has grown since the days some 20 years ago at McCoy.

“It’s exploded,” Veronica Rea said. She listed some of the many services LINC provides, including help with employment, rental and utility assistance, the community site councils, youth transition programs, early childhood support — in dozens of program sites across multiple counties.

“Oh, she’d be so proud,” Veronica Rea said. Then laughing with Akridge, she said, “she’d probably be up there helping run it . . .”

“Absolutely,” Akridge said. “No doubt. No doubt.”