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This could be the year Karrie Weinhardt and her family spend more than a week at their Wisconsin lake house. Weinhardt has time on her hands after stepping aside from roles in high-profile events and businesses that have consumed much of the last 15 years.

Weinhardt has earned a reputation as a premier planner and organizer of events that have helped turn a national spotlight on Des Moines, although the fingerprints left by her largely behind-the-scenes roles might be better detected with a magnifying glass.

She will not organize the Bravo Gala this year, for example. She is no longer the general manager at West Glen Town Center, having stepped down from that job in November. Her involvement with the Des Moines Arts Festival trails a few years in the past, as does Winefest Des Moines.

“I’m OK with not having a lot on my plate right now,” she said.

That description of her life is a little misleading. She is busy raising three children, ages 8 to 14, and with her husband, Mark, a member of the Belin McCormick law firm, stays active in community affairs.

“I’m not sure that I’m actually a woman to watch,” she said.

But people in Greater Des Moines have been watching and listening to Weinhardt since the mid-1990s, when she organized the Des Moines Arts Festival and helped move its transition from the Iowa State Fairgrounds to downtown. She also introduced the arts community to the late Mo Dana, who led the festival for eight years before her death in 2006.

Weinhardt has followed a path of accidental encounters that have led to bigger things.

Weinhardt arrived in Des Moines in 1991 when Mark went to work for the Belin McCormick law firm. They were married after a six-month courtship in Rockford, Ill., where Mark was a trial lawyer in the Winnebago County State’s Attorney office and Karrie, returning to her hometown to study for law school entrance exams, worked for the same office as an advocate for abused children.

She had graduated from Kenyon College in Ohio with a degree in political science and an interest in music, but little background in the arts, where she would first make a name for herself in Des Moines.

Weinhardt planned a brief layover in Rockford. She had been working as a paralegal in New York, including a stint with John Doar, the civil rights attorney who escorted James Meredith to class in 1962 at the University of Mississippi, an event that helped end racial segregation at the school.

Her plan was to move from Rockford to California, reconnect with an old boyfriend and attend law school.

“But I met Mark, and six months later we were married,” she said.

On arrival in Des Moines, Weinhardt went to work as a temporary employee with the Chamber of Commerce and eventually worked for its lobbyist. Although she had a degree in political science, she found that she was more interested in political theory than the inner workings of American democracy.

While tiring of the inside game of local politics, she heard that the Des Moines Arts Center needed someone to organize membership campaigns and other events.

“That was such an inspiring work environment … I was just in awe of it,” Weinhardt said, noting that she had no previous experience with art or art history.

With the job came responsibility for organizing the annual Arts Festival at the fairgrounds.

“After about two or three years at the fairgrounds, I really felt like it was losing its vitality there,” Weinhardt said.

As a result, Weinhardt went on a tour of other venues in the country. And she consulted with Dana, who would eventually take Weinhardt’s place as director of the festival.

The two met shortly after Dana moved to Greater Des Moines. She was selling shoes at Van Maur and helped Weinhardt solve the mystery of how to match two pairs of shoes she needed to wear with two dresses she had bought to wear to Art Center events.

“I’m not a shopper. I hate to shop. I said, ‘I have these two dresses, find me shoes to go with them,'” Weinhardt said.

The two struck up a friendship, with Weinhardt suggesting that Dana become involved with the Arts Festival.

At the time, Weinhardt had a 13-month-old child and was pregnant. She was pressed for time, trying to transition the festival to a new location.

“I went to the (Arts Festival) committee and said, ‘I don’t want to do this for the next five years. I don’t want to be the person in charge.'”

She convinced the committee to interview Dana.

“We had five months to pull a rabbit out of a hat,” Weinhardt said. “I told them that she could pull a rabbit out of her hat.”

Weinhardt also determined that rather than work for one boss, she could launch her own event planning business, work her own hours, avoid becoming desk-bound and spend more time with her family.

“Projects find me,” she said.

She launched KWW LC. She continued to do contract work for the Art Center and served as a court-appointed advocate for children.

In 2003, she was co-director of the inaugural Winefest Des Moines, the annual celebration that was the brainchild of former Business Record owner and publisher Connie Wimer.

Weinhardt stayed with the event for three years. During that time period, she also saw her career as an event planner take an unexpected turn.

“I kind of do everything for three years. I figure by then, whatever event you’re doing, it needs new blood, somebody who can make it better, a fresh set of eyes,” Weinhardt said.

In 2005, Greater Des Moines businessman Gary Kirke made a cold call to her unlisted home telephone and asked her to plan a one-of-its-kind wedding for his daughter, Jonna.

“His name meant nothing to me,” Weinhardt said. “I told him I was flattered, but that I didn’t do weddings.”

Kirke was undeterred, and said that he would have his daughter call Weinhardt.

“I told Mark, ‘I just had the weirdest call. It’s a guy in West Des Moines named Kirke, Gary Kirke,'” she said. Mark replied that Gary Kirke was one of his firm’s clients and that she should at least meet with him.

They met, and over the next 1½ years she got to know the Kirke family while planning the wedding.

“I feel like I’m one of the luckiest people in the world,” Weinhardt said about her relationship with the Kirke family.

Weinhardt left enough of an impression that when Kirke wanted a new general manager for West Glen Town Center, he turned to his wedding planner.

“She was a community organizer, good enough to be president,” Kirke said.

He said in an interview last year that he hired Weinhardt because she had good business acumen and was a proven project manager.

However, Weinhardt said the West Glen job required her to be on call around the clock. In November, she decided to return to her consulting business, KWW LC, and spend more time with her family, including during those long vacations at a Wisconsin lake.