POCATELLO — As the massive limousine pulled up to Pocatello High School, the special needs students who Christian Colonel interacts with everyday exclaimed in joy.

It was a beautiful Saturday evening, and Colonel, a first-year special education teacher at Poky, was taking 13 students to prom.

And he was doing so in style.

“They were kind of star-struck,” Colonel said. “Most of them had never been in a limousine before, and they were sometimes overwhelmed. They didn’t know if they could dance in the limo and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, go to town.’ They loved it.”

Colonel got the idea to take the students to prom about three months ago. But it was fall of 2015 when he held a fundraising whiffle ball game for his nonprofit organization, Hitting Hearts, that helped pay for the students’ night to remember.

After the students piled into the limo, Colonel took them to Fuji Japanese Steakhouse in Chubbuck for dinner. After eating, they returned to the high school, put on their dancing shoes and hit the dance floor. From when the limo left the school at 6:30 p.m. to when the students’ parents picked them up from the school around 10:30p.m., the evening was theirs.

“For one night, they felt like celebrities,” Colonel said. “And that’s what I wanted to give them. … Everybody wants to be included, and that’s what this was about.”

Colonel didn’t put together the night’s festivities all by himself. He had plenty of help. Lacey Teal Photography stepped up to take photos, Flowers by LD donated corsages and boutonnieres, Pocatello Limousine provided transportation and Fuji Japanese Steakhouse worked to accommodate Colonel and his party.

“It was perfect,” Colonel said. “It was absolutely perfect. … With everybody involved and everyone supporting it, it worked out perfectly. From limo to pictures to corsages to the dinner to the dance — everything was just flawless. It was one of those nights where everything came together.”

When Colonel organized Hitting Hearts’ whiffle ball fundraiser in the fall of 2015 that helped fund prom night for his special needs students, he wanted to make it an annual event.

Last year, however, with him juggling his new gig at Poky High, he wasn’t able to get it going.

This fall, however, he says he’ll have a similar event planned, and he looks forward to what kind of events and activities that he can help fund in the future.

For now, though, Colonel has the memory of being able to give 13 students a night where they felt on top of the world.

“People keep saying, ‘You made their dreams come true,’” Colonel said. “I’m like, ‘They made my dreams come true.’ Like at Christmas, I’d rather give a gift than receive a gift. I like seeing the smiles and the gratitude. … Some of the pictures Lacey took are priceless. I’ll blow some of them up and put them in my classroom.”