By Suzanne Vanderhoef

People say there’s no place like home… but for some college students, Mindy Horowitz is the next best thing.

She’s the “Mindy” behind mindyKnows — a kind of local helper for parents of students away from home and on their own for the first time. mindyKNOWS is a local St. Louis-based service that helps provide support for out of state families when their children are away at college. That includes anything that comes, up either anticipated or unanticipated: from delivering a cake for a student’s birthday to helping find a doctor if they’re sick.

 Mindy came up with the idea when her oldest child went off to college and she saw a need for a local person to act as sort of a “Concierge Mom”.

“I saw immediately what all the out of town parents –the magnitude of everything that people needed from out of town,” Horowitz says. “(Your) kids are far, far from home, and when you’re hunting around online and trying to figure out who to go to for the dentist, it could get a little bit overwhelming. But if you have a known person that you trust, then it just simplifies everything.”

And from its roots in St. Louis, mindKNOWS has now expanded to more than a dozen “Mindys” tied to college campuses across the country.

“When we set up the business, I thought it would be just for the first year students, but what I’ve found is that the needs are different every year,” she adds. “The kids are so fabulous. I always say I created this win-win win situation. I love what I do. I love it! The families that I work with, the parents really love it. They’re respectful and wonderful and the kids are too. I think everybody benefits from it, and I just feel so lucky.”