It’s been said that ambition is the path to success but persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.

Iowa breeder and Amateur competitor Kari Jewell has both.

Although Jewell’s involvement in the show horse industry dates back to the 1990s, she has only competed once or twice in the past five years. In 2019 she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time and it took her away from her passion for a while.

But now she’s back and the return is extra special since she’s showing Baby You The Best, a 2021 chestnut filly by RL Best Of Sudden out of Jewell’s own mare, Lazy Lopin Moonlight.

“I am very excited to get back at it,” she said.

Jewell grew up in Maysville, Iowa, a small town of about 150 people. After high school she attended the University of Notre Dame, graduating in 2000 with a major in accounting and a minor in finance. After college she moved to Chicago to work for one of the “big four’ accounting firms.

“I remained there until 2006 when I was diagnosed (the first time) with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and decided to move back home to be with my family during treatment,” she said. “I ended up staying in Maysville and built a house in 2015 on some ground my family owned.”

All settled in Maysville, Jewell went to work as CFO for her family’s Davenport, Iowa companies – Jewell Machine & Fabrication, a machine shop; and Jewell Tool Technology, a cutting tool manufacturing company. She works alongside her brother, Matt, who serves as president. They lost their dad to to leukemia in 2014 but spend time with their mother who splits her time between Iowa and Florida. In 2019 Jewell started dating her brother’s friend, Troy Vollbeer. She has known him since high school and they are now engaged to be married.

“Luckily, he is very patient with me and my lifestyle,” she said.

Jewell also owns a farm just outside Maysville where she raises show horses. Her trainer, Millissa Daurer, runs her own training operation – MKD Performance Horses – out of Jewell’s farm and she trains Jewell’s all-around horses.

“Millissa and I have known each other for years – technically for decades since we showed POAs together as kids – and she helps manage my breeding program,” Jewell said.

At the center of that breeding program is Lazy Lopin Moonlight, sired by Lazy Loper and out of the highly decorated American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) show mare, Zippo By Moonlight.

“I was lucky enough to purchase Lazy Lopin Moonlight from Dana Smith through Jon Barry at the end of 2018,” Jewell explained. “As soon as we bought her, we immediately started planning to flush embryos. We were so excited since mares with her breeding don’t come along very often.”

For the first couple of years, both Smith and Jewell were able to flush embryos. The very first baby Lazy Lopin Moonlight produced is Moonlights Dream, sired by Magnum Chic Dream, owned by Laska Anderson.

“Jon Barry and Dana had a vision when they paired a great-bred Western Pleasure mare with a great Reining stallion and they hit it out of the park by creating a National Snaffle Bit Association (NSBA) World Champion and Quarter Horse Congress Champion on the first try,” Jewell said.

The return of cancer in 2019 forced Jewell out of the show pen for a while but her breeding program forged ahead. She bred Lazy Lopin Moonlight to RL Best Of Sudden in 2020 and the following April she was blessed with a stunning chestnut filly that she named Baby You The Best (Karina).

“When she was first born, I just remember thinking, ‘This one is going to be a show horse,’” Jewell said.

Some of the foals born at Jewell’s farm are sent out to be developed into futurity contenders.

“We currently have futurity horses with both Casey Willis in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and with Drew Debuhr in Eldora, Iowa,” Jewell explained. “When Casey started taking outside horses, Millissa suggested that we reach out and see if he would be willing to take a couple of our young ones.  We love his approach and his end product, and we are raising horses we thought would be tailor-made for his program since he has had a lot of success with both RL Best of Sudden and Zippo By Moonlight babies.  We essentially picked Casey with Karina in mind even though she was a brand-new baby when we first started sending horses to him.”

Willis said he has loved Karina since the moment she arrived.

“She was a beautiful mare and great-legged from the start,” he said.

Last year, Willis and Karina placed in the top 10 in the 3-Year-Old & Over $2,500 Novice Horse Open Western Pleasure Stakes at the Quarter Horse Congress and the Level 1 Western Pleasure at the AQHA World Show.

This year, Willis and Karina were named Circuit Champions in Green Western Pleasure at the Florida Gulf Coast Circuit, the Arizona Sun Circuit and the Mid-Summer Madness. They were Reserve Circuit Champions in Green Western Pleasure at The Madness and were Reserve Champions in the $10,000 Maturity at both The Premier and The Madness. In addition, they are currently leading the nation in  AQHA  Level 1/Green Western Pleasure.

“After watching Karina make her debut last fall and seeing how broke she has gotten this year she just seemed like she would be a great fit for me,” Jewell said.

Willis agreed.

“We decided this year she would be ready for Kari to start showing,” he said. “She’s an incredible show horse, she puts her ears up and does her job.”

In June Jewell finally got her turn.

“It was absolutely great to be back in the pen,” she said. “I have only shown maybe twice in the last five years so there was definitely a lot of knocking the cobwebs off and just getting back in the saddle but I was so happy to be back.”

And she’s happy to be making her return on a horse she raised.

“Karina is huge hocked just like her mama and can jog a hole in the ground,” she said. “She is an RL out of a Moonlight mare so she might snort a little bit on the walk up to the pen but she always gets down to business when it’s showtime.  It’s really uncanny how much she reminds me of her mama.”

Jewell has plenty of experience in the show pen. At her first appearance at a Quarter Horse Congress in 1998, she won the Novice Amateur Showmanship with Barpassers Glow, who has since retired to serve as cornerstone of Jewell’s breeding program.

“Barpassers Glow is the granddam to Jana Simons great gelding Gimme UR Best Stuff, who we raised out of my broodmare This Version Glows, sired by Good Version out of  Barpassers Glow,” Jewell explained.

She won the Congress again in 2008 with Invite Me Anytime in Amateur Performance Halter Geldings.

Then in 2017 she placed third at the AQHA World Show in the Level 2 Amateur Western Riding and fourth in Level 2 Amateur Trail with KM Zip Me Suddenly.

But Jewell is laser-focused on this year and doing her best with Baby You The Best.

“I’m excited to show her in the Level 1 Amateur Pleasure at the Congress this year and eager to show her more throughout 2026, she said. “My main goal is to just get back in the pen and remember how to show. It would be awesome to see Karina and Casey win the year-end title in the Green Western Pleasure as well.”

But that is just the start of it.

“This year we hit the jackpot by having a black stud colt with four white socks who is a full brother to Karina,” Jewell said. “ Casey called dibs on him at eight hours old.”