Program Staff - Sew Loved, Inc.

Vicki Miles: Director/Founder

Vicki Miles is the founder of Sew Loved which opened in late 2012 after two years of planning. She is David Ziker’s Partner in TheSewingLab Industrial Training School.

Vicki has over 30 years of experience in quilting and has won numerous awards for her own quilts. She has been able to leverage her passion for this quilting hobby to solicit support from her wide network of fellow quilters as well as the quilt industry leaders. She has been successful in raising over $300,000 in equipment and supplies over the last years.

Vicki retired in 2019 after being a northern Indiana business owner since 1986 of VLM International, Inc. located in Mishawaka, Indiana.

Vicki has lived in Elkhart and St. Joseph counties her entire life with the exception of twice moving to Portugal for 2 year periods (once for a business project and the second time for voluntary service with a missional church plant). She is married and has 4 children and 10 grandchildren.

Vicki now works full-time with Sew Loved and TheSewingLab. Duties include program development, promotion for donations of equipment and supplies, business development, community relations, quilting mentor.

David Ziker:Program Support/Founder of Vested Interest

David Ziker has been the 3^rd generation owner and operator of Ziker Cleaners for the past 40 years. Ziker Cleaners is a 101-year old local professional dry-cleaning and laundry company.

Born and raised and worked his entire career in South Bend, along with having a deep connection to the area, David made the difficult decision to move the operations of Ziker Cleaners to Mishawaka to build a new state of the art production and distribution facility leaving its 70,000 Sq Ft facility in South Bend vacant that the company operated out of for 80 years. The facility was listed for sale for 2 years with no interest.

Then, David met Rami Sadek the owner of the Langlab. Rami toured the facility and immediately saw a new purpose for the old and tired vacant facility. In May of 2017 this vision and purpose was launched by David and wife Cheryl. Their personal investment of time, money and energy became the Vested Interest project in May of 2017. It quickly became a community-based arts and business incubator with a focus on job/vocational training that the City of South Bend is recognizing and supporter of it being part of the reinvention that the city has seen the past few years.