2009 GOLDEN PITON AWARDS

Humanitarian

SEAN PATRICK

When Sean Patrick was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1997, she was 45 and, in her words, “ridiculously healthy.” A year earlier, Patrick spent her free time climbing, mountain biking, skiing, and scuba diving — that is, when she wasn’t traveling 26 weeks per year for the Impact Group, a strategic marketing and design firm she founded in Western Colorado. “Then one day I didn’t feel right,” said Patrick in a 2007 telephone interview for the Daily Camera newspaper, in Boulder, Colorado. Like more than three-quarters of women with the disease, nearly a year passed before she was properly diagnosed with what became late-stage ovarian cancer.

In the following years, Patrick survived multiple surgeries, including one last-resort operation in 2001 that she was given a mere 20 percent chance of surviving. Patrick beat the odds and, remarkably, viewed her experience as an opportunity to develop awareness and to change the face of the disease. “Ninety percent of women with ovarian cancer do not have a family history of it, nor is it an ‘old woman’s disease.’ Instead of thinking, ‘why me?’ it should be, ‘why not me?’” she said in the interview. Patrick founded HERA (Health, Empowerment, Research, Awareness; LUKE LINK TO: herafoundation.org) in Carbondale, Colorado, in 2002; she was its Executive Director until she passed away January 20, 2009, from complications due to the disease.

One hallmark of Patrick’s legacy is the annual Climb4Life events, which raise money for and awareness about ovarian cancer. The eight-annual event, held in Salt Lake City over four days in 2009, raised more than $80,000 for, as Patrick explained in a 2008 telephone interview, “Outside-the-box solutions to the disease. There’s enough funding for chemo research. We fund research on high-risk/high-reward projects, just like climbing is a high-risk/high-reward activity. The current system suppresses creativity. What we’re trying to do is reward creativity. It’s gonna take a different approach.”

Sean Patrick thought outside the box by bringing ovarian cancer awareness to the national level via the climbing community. Her humanitarian efforts live on as HERA prepares for its next Climb4Life event, set for February 20 through 28, 2010, in Washington DC. For all she’s given to the climbing, health, and women’s communities, Sean Patrick posthumously wins the 2009 Humanitarian Golden Piton Award.