If Sheriff Aaron Appelhans has one message, it’s that change can happen anywhere.

Born in a big city, Appelhans never thought he’d go into law enforcement, but life has a way of changing directions when a local chief approached him about an officer job.

"Truth be told, I told him, I was like, 'I'm not a big fan of law enforcement. That's not something I think I really want to do,'" he laughed.

He ended up becoming something he loved. Ten years later, a new opportunity knocked—to become the Albany County Sheriff, and in turn, become Wyoming’s first-ever Black sheriff.

"I was like, well, there's an opportunity, you know, it's and I knew that the agency had a whole host of issues, some of which that I figured I could definitely deal with that," he said.

Although he’s had the position for about a year, he’s already made changes to the department.

"When you work within the system, you can see the things that it does well, you can see its flaws. You can see its loopholes, you can see all of its cracks," he said.

His main goal is to fix the culture. In a rural town in the middle of the country, he made the department more transparent in dealing with the public. He started making the path to drug and alcohol rehab for repeat offenders clearer and he focused on recruitment, specifically who he was recruiting.

"Law enforcement traditionally has a really terrible job in terms of recruitment. They recruit the same type of people over and over and over again. And it creates these situations you see across the country where maybe your police force doesn't necessarily represent the community that you serve," said Appelhans.

In less than a year, he’s filled 19 deputy positions with people of different backgrounds and ethnicities. Some of the people on the force haven’t liked the changes and left. Appelhans has even fired someone for past racist behavior, but he says all these are necessary steps toward cultural change.

"We're in the people business and we're not into excluding people, so we're going to be as inclusive as we possibly can."

He’s looking to hire three more people in the coming months, continuing to build his vision of a more inclusive, community-focused force.

As his story spreads of what he’s able to do in a small town, he wants to make it clear: change can happen in the most unlikely places, and anyone interesting in making that change shouldn’t be afraid to take that initial step.

"Sometimes you gotta be the first so that second, third and fourth can thrive as well," he said. "So, take that chance. Got to take that opportunity when it comes in and then go create that opportunity for yourself."

TOKYO —

Related video above: Despite COVID-19 and logistical woes, Tokyo 2020 to be the most inclusive Olympics

Alice Dearing has an afro, a voluminous puff nearly impossible to protect in most swimming caps. Her hair shrinks if it gets wet. And the chlorine? The chemicals in a pool can cause severe damage that requires substantial time and money to treat.

The first Black female swimmer on Britain’s Olympic team uses the Soul Cap, an extra-large silicone covering designed specifically to protect dreadlocks, weaves, hair extensions, braids, and thick and curly hair. But Dearing has been forbidden from using the cap in her Olympic debut next week in the women's 10k marathon swim.

FINA, which oversees international competitions in swimming, rejected the application from the British makers of the Soul Cap for use in the Tokyo Games, citing no previous instance in which swimmers needed “caps of such size and configuration.” It also wondered if the cap could create an advantage by disrupting the flow of water.

On social media and in Black swimming circles, the outcry was swift and the conversation went on for days. A Change.org petition was launched and Dearing, an ambassador for the cap and co-founder of the Black Swimming Association, openly expressed disappointment.

For people of color, this was so much more than a ban on a swimming cap. Dismissing it represented yet another injustice.

THE BACKLASH

It’s been five years since the Rio Games, when American Simone Manuel became the first Black female swimmer to win Olympic gold. Since then, there has been little uptick in swimmers of color at the elite level.

Like Dearing, Donta Katai of Zimbabwe is the first Black swimmer to represent her country. And at almost any meet at the international level, swimmers of color are extremely rare. The U.S. team has only two Black females, Manuel and Natalie Hinds.

Those familiar with the situation say the reasons for that shortage — and the racism behind them — run deep in history.

Neither Manuel nor Hinds understands the dismissal of the Soul Cap. Both Americans have sponsorship from other companies that make caps to protect their hair, but they were disappointed that a cap made by a Black-owned business specifically to aid swimmers of color was outlawed.

“It doesn’t do the best for inclusivity in the sport," Manuel said.

The tenuous relationship between Black people and water goes back a long way. In the era of segregation in the United States, Black swimmers were barred from pools; those that did permit swimmers of color were often unsafe and neglected.

“The predominance of white athletes in swimming is a key example of a racial disparity in sport that can be linked to histories of institutional racism,” said Claire Sisco King, an associate professor of communication studies at Vanderbilt University and editor of the Women’s Studies in Communication international journal.

Accessibility to public pools is another barrier, King notes, and wealth inequality makes an often expensive sport like swimming inaccessible. She said the banning of the Soul Cap “risks perpetuating the racist assumption that Black athletes don’t belong in the sport of swimming.”

According to the USA Swimming Foundation, 64% of Black children do not know how to swim compared to 40% of white American children. Additionally, 79% of children in American families that earn less than $50,000 a year do not know how to swim.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 1999 and 2010, the fatal unintentional drowning rate for Blacks was significantly higher than white swimmers; for every white child between 5 and 18 years old who drowned, 5.5 Black children drowned.

Danielle Obe co-founded, with Dearing, the Black Swimming Association not long after the 2019 Christmas Eve drowning of a father and two children while on holiday in Spain.

“We just thought, we've got to do something for our community,” Obe said. After conversations with Swimming World magazine, she found that 95% of Black adults in London do not swim and 80% of Black children leave primary school not yet able to swim.

Said Obe: “We thought the only way to get more Alice Dearings in the pool, with Alice being Black and among the 5% in the water, we had to reduce the 95% not in the water."

ROOTS OF THE SOUL CAP

Dearing is among the Black swimmers who balance love of the water with the difficulties of protecting hair.

Obe suspects Dearing will have her afro braided into cornrows in order to use an approved cap in the marathon swim, but Dearing had been using the Soul Cap. It was created by schoolmates Toks Ahmed and Michael Chapman, who both did not learn how to swim until their late 20s.

“The perception has always been that swimming isn’t for Black people; my mom doesn’t swim, Michael’s mom doesn’t swim, none of our friends swim," Ahmed said, "and it was like, ‘This is nuts, — we need to learn how to swim.’”

A woman in the class struggled to keep her bathing cap on her head, which sparked the Soul Cap idea.

“We both wondered why there wasn’t swim caps made to accommodate that more voluminous hair and afro textures and bigger hair,” Ahmed said. “We spoke to our moms and our sisters and they both all said, to be fair, a big barrier to swimming is the fact our hair gets soaked, we haven’t got a swimming cap that works.”

What they thought would be a niche product received such favorable feedback that the duo realized “we were filling a gap, providing something that removed a barrier to women and children who did not want to swim.”

In 2017 they self-funded 150 Black extra-large caps, another 60 in burgundy, and are now taking orders for about 25,000 caps. The caps started with the two understated colors; then they were contacted by open-water swimmers who needed brighter hues. Then came queries from swimmers who didn’t have full afros and wanted the caps in smaller sizes.

The attention created by the federation's rejection has been effective, though Dearing wasn't available to talk about it. Her team wouldn't make her available for comment until after her Aug. 4 competition.

SUCCESS CAUSING CHANGE

Manuel and Hinds were part of the bronze medal-winning 4x100 meter freestyle relay and Manuel, a four-time medalist, made history when she won gold in the 100-meter free at Rio.

Black swimmers' success can be a change agent, but there must also be specific steps toward creating more interest and opportunity, said Shontel Cargill, a former competitive swimmer who is Black. She is now a therapist and assistant clinic director at Thriveworks in Cumming, Georgia.

“Due to the discriminatory and segregated past of swimming, Black families have been taught to fear swimming instead of embrace it,” Cargill said.

FINA is now in talks with Soul Cap and said in a statement it will review the application again later this year. The governing body said it is “understanding of the importance of inclusivity and representation,” and the review of the Soul Cap and similar products "are part of wider initiatives aimed at ensuring there are no barriers to participation in swimming, which is both a sport and a vital life skill.”

The federation's swimwear approval committee chairman “is fully aware of the cultural issues that Soul Cap has raised, and we are reviewing the process,” Brent Nowicki, an American named executive director of FINA in June, said Saturday.

Ahmed feels encouraged after conversations with Nowicki, who he said was “quite apologetic for the way the application was handled."

“I think it's testament that if there was more representation at that level, and more representation at the approval process, someone might have said ‘Hey, let’s consider this because there are people out there who want to swim competitively, but don't want to cut their hair down short and maybe don't want to compromise,'" Ahmed said. "It's just about giving people an option."

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — When you walk into Kaitlyn Mahoney’s house, you’ll notice every shelf is filled with pages and pages of insight. There are hundreds of books, all with a similar purpose.

“One of the things that I’m really committed to is prioritizing stories by and about Black people, Jewish people, fat people, disabled people, as many different marginalization’s and intersections with the queer identify as I can," Mahoney said.

Mahoney is the founder of Under the Umbrella Bookstore. It is an upcoming community bookstore serving the LGBTQIA+ community in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the first of its kind in the area.

Fewer than 1% of small businesses in America are certified as LGBT business enterprises. Now, this new business is joining the ranks to open its own inclusive space.

“Under the Umbrella is meant to flip the entire hierarchy of prioritization so that those stories featuring or about black queers, and trans queers and disabled queers are the most important ones," Mahoney said. “What I envision for Under the Umbrella is a space where people can come and do what I did with yourself and those books and you are learning about yourself. You’re having an experience for and with yourself and that book.”

Mahoney's own experiences with books is what has sent her on this journey of self-discovery.

“I started reading more diversly in general and that’s kind of how I realized how diverse life could be and is, but how diverse it could be for me," Mahoney said. “It made me start questioning what I had been talk about gender and sexuality. Because I grew up in a religion where gender is male and female, and it’s eternal and that’s it, and sexually was either straight or gay and one of those was a bad thing to be. Books is how I really found the language to describe a lot of things I had been feeling, but I just hadn’t let myself just think about.”

Mahoney says this space will be safe for those who have nowhere to go.

“There are a lot of queer youth who desperately need acceptance and love," Mahoney said.

She wants to make sure no one is left behind wondering.

“I can’t even imagine what my life would look like if I would have had that when I was younger. If I had been exposed to the love and acceptance that I desperately needed to help me and myself," Mahoney said.

Members of the community couldn’t agree more.

“I can’t tell you how many people have said those words to me, ‘I wish this space had existed when I was younger," Mahoney said.

People have come together to raise more than $55,000 to make this vision of Under the Umbrella a reality.

“I knew that the space was necessary. I knew that we needed it, but the response from the community has just been amazing," Mahoney said.

Mahoney says Salt Lake City needs businesses like this, but so does every other city. According to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, out of the 28 million small businesses across the country, only 909 are officially certified as LGBT Business Enterprises.

“There are only a handful that are specifically queer, but there are a handful that are very queer focused," Mahoney said.

The NGLCC says businesses like these are a vibrant, essential part of the small business engine that makes the economy run.

“There is nothing like this in Utah and I can’t tell you why, like I don’t know," Mahoney said.

That is why she says books and book stores need to be more inclusive nationally and world wide.

“I found it really hard to go into a general bookstore like your Barns and Noble or your local and that just has a general selection of books was hard to find books that were specifically queer or that showed identities that are everywhere but that you don’t necessarily see in books," Mahoney said.

With a house filled with books and items made by LGBTQ+ individuals ready to sell Kaitlyn is ready to welcome all.

“So, however you identify under the LGBTQIA+ queer umbrella, you are welcome under the umbrella," Mahoney said.