Deer Valley is opening for the season on Saturday, December 8th. When the ski resort opens this year it’ll also be hosting an inaugural event Shred for Red which benefits the Utah Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Park City resident Nancy Winn survived her battle with leukemia thanks to modern advances in medicine. Her husband Dr. Robert Winn has since written a book about their experience and has helped organize the inaugural Shred for Red event.
“I was lucky enough to get my two favorite organizations together to connect them.” Winn continued, “Obviously, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society which I have a great relationship with because of all that they do to help blood cancer patients and then Deer Valley who I’ve been fortunate enough to be their medical director since they opened a long time ago. Deer Valley graciously and generously came up with doing this opening day event and it’s going to be really something special and fun.”
The Shred for Red fundraising event takes place at Deer Valley resort on Saturday December 8th, the resort’s opening day. The money raised will go to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Leukemia survivor and Olympian Bryan Fletcher explains that anybody can participate.
“You can sign up as an individual or sign up with teams up to eight people.” Fletcher explained, “$200 is the fundraising minimum for an individual, $100 for youth 12 and under. Once you hit that minimum you’ll be invited to the event, you’ll get a ski pass for the day at Deer Valley and then also the après ski party following the ski day event. On the mountain as you’re skiing with your team, they’ll be on mountain challenges that you can go and do. So, it’s kind of a fun way to explore the resort and get to interact with the people in the resort and do some different ski challenges.”
Teams that complete the scavenger hunt like challenges will win awards at the end of the day. Those who participate will also have the opportunity to meet the 11 Olympians there as part of the event. Fletcher says so far, they’ve raised about $49,000.
“The top fundraising teams will also be invited to a VIP dinner on December 7th at the St. Regis.” Fletcher said, “That’ll be an exiting event and the other thing is that Deer Valley has offered discount lodging for individuals who want to make a staycation out of it. Come for the weekend, you can definitely take advantage of the nice hotel rooms we have up there.”
Winn says that when his wife was diagnosed with leukemia the doctors told her she would be lucky to live one week.
“Her immune system was so badly broken he feared that she would get an infection and die quite rapidly.” Winn continued, “We got lucky that when she was admitted to the hospital the FDA had just released a new drug that prevented the mouth ulcers that cancer patients get. She did not get any of those ulcers and therefore did not have a portal for germs to go into her body and she survived. That’s the kind of thing these new drugs that come out can make that big of difference. I attribute her survival just to that drug to get her through that first, very rough period.”
Winn says that out of the 18 drugs that were released last year by the FDA to help blood cancer patients, research for 15 of them were funded by events like this.
“Leukemia and all the other blood cancers are very serious diseases, and someone is affected every three minutes.” Winn explained, “35% of all child cancer is blood cancer. This is going to be a fun event. The nice thing is it’s going to help all those patients and hopefully eradicate blood cancers in our lifetime.”
To register for the event, you can visit this link or text Shred for Red to 41411.
