Meet our 5th Annual Women Who Rock the Rockies Finalists

5TH ANNUAL Women Who Rock the Rockies

WHO ARE THEY? Well actually, they are all of you ladies, lasses and feminine badasses. Living in elevated towns can be tough, long winters, short summers but our passions keep us coming out for more, and we thrive. Since we cannot write about all of you we chose a few that will inspire chosen by readers and previous Women Who Rock the Rockies.

Meet Sandy Helt, a fashion-forward thinker who has brought style, one store at a time, to Colorado’s mountain town women. What started as a dream during Helt’s college years has resulted in a fabulous line of boutiques, now in seven Colorado locations.

Crafting and creativity was a gift her mother shared with her and her sister as they grew up. It is where she believes her zeal for art, jewelry, and the fashion world came from and she is very grateful for the passion her mother instilled in her. During college, where Sandy was studying Pre-Med, she took an Entrepreneurship class as one of her electives. Sandy loved designing jewelry, a hobby she began while attending University, and decided that Entrepreneurship would be the anchor in achieving successes in life and owning her own business became the goal.

After graduating, Sandy began selling her own jewelry designs. She left her childhood state of North Dakota and headed to Colorado where she called Boulder her home for a short while. Her first business was originally called Pearl Street Jewelry and Sandy would visit stores with samples that her clients could order. “I traveled through the state several times each year, taking my clients orders, and shipping their selections to them.”

When she moved to Breckenridge Sandy decided to make Pearl Street Jewelry a full-time gig.

“I was very busy and looking for opportunities to sell at farmers markets and through the art show circuit in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona while living the gypsy lifestyle out of my car. In the back of my mind though, I couldn’t give up the idea of having a clothing boutique. The problem was I didn’t have the means or I couldn’t find a great spot in Summit County to start something up. It was through serendipity that I found the perfect opportunity in Avon.”

A fair sized but manageable space opened up in The Annex at 142 Beaver Creek Place and became the first Valley Girl Boutique, lovingly named for the women of the Vail Valley who began shopping there. “The name was perfect and attracted Vail Valley locals as well as tourists. I wanted to create a store that really appealed to people who lived in the pieces through sales in my store. I bring a wide variety of jewelry from different artists and try to find unique things to create an appealing selection.”

Ruby Jane was created to move away from the Valleygirl concept as Valleygirl Boutique was really intended more for the women of the Vail Valley. “I was excited about growing Ruby Jane as a new concept and include home decor, wedding gifts, a baby section, more shoes, and jewelry. Clothing, of course, is still the anchor but the selection is different from Valleygirl’s offerings. I also really wanted to bring Ruby Jane to more mountain towns. I was very careful in selecting opportunities that made sense for our business model. The Old Bay Street shop space and the building became available in Breckenridge. This really allowed me to branch out and take

Sandy Helt

Making Fashion Affordable and Available to Women in Colorado’s Mountains and Beyond By Holly Resignolo

area first and bring affordable fashionable wear to mountain town communities because there was really no place to find stylish clothing at moderate price points. I have always loved being a mountain girl, but I wanted to be a stylie mountain girl.” It all started as a one-woman show when the first store opened in 2007 at the Avon location, and it was not all fun and fabulous. It was a bit more rough and tumble as Sandy broke her ankle two weeks before she opened, but she persevered and opened a second store a year later in Breckenridge. During that time Sandy still had her jewelry business but said, “it was challenging to keep up with both the business and produce my jewelry line. I still needed jewelry but after a few years, I relinquished that love and began supporting other artists who were creating unique Ruby Jane from concept to reality. Another opportunity opened up in Denver Highlands and my sister was living in the area. This allowed us to expand in the Front Range.”

“We are a family run business, myself, my husband, my sister, my motherin-law, my niece and sister-in-law have all been involved and still are. Throughout all of this, I was having children. I had my daughter Lila about a year after I open the Breckenridge store. She turned 1 when I opened up the Aspen store. Being a working mom has its challenges, I had my second daughter two years later and have always brought them to Market with me. I stay involved. Right now I am helping lead two girl scout troops with my girls. I want to do more with the community and the kids. I am very com

mitted to keeping up with my children and being the best mom I can.”

“One of my favorite parts of operating Valleygirl and RubyJane is attending the markets. Buying trips are so fun. I love going to Market seeing what’s new, meeting the designers, checking out new brands, labels, and new lines. I’m always trying to find something different, things that catch my eye. I try to shop at the market as an individual would shop at any of my stores.”

“I have an amazing management team and I also love working in the stores. Each town, each store has its own identity. I love visiting each store, experiencing their differences and connecting with all of my staff. I am always waiting for perfect shop spaces to open and be ready to jump when I find the next right space.” Boulder had been in Sandy’s mind’s eye for a long while and when space recently became available she took the time to negotiate the rate to continue the expansion of her family run business.

Sandy’s newest focus is on her online store RubyJane.com. It is a new venture that will allow the ladies who loved Valleygirl and Ruby Jane while visiting Colorado to continue to connect with the stores and our mountain town vibe.

Sandy Helt’s entrepreneurial vision has helped bring jobs to women who love living in Colorado’s mountain town communities as well as affordable clothing to both the fashionistas and us rough and tumble girls too. Economically each town has benefited from the sales revenues she generates. Sandy is a powerhouse, albeit a humble powerhouse. You would never know what an asset she has been to all of Colorado’s mountain communities during a casual conversation. This girl is truly a Woman Who Rocks the Rockies.

Today you can find Valleygirl Boutique in Avon, Breckenridge, and Edwards. Ruby Jane has locations in Denver Highlands, Steamboat Springs, and her new Boulder location. You will find Sandy visiting each one of her locations and continuing her smart growth long into the future.

Janie Hayes

By Anna Sitton

There are two kinds of people in this big, wide, beautiful world ...

the ones who take on a 4,300-mile bike race across America and don’t quit even when a pit bull bite in Kentucky leads to a subsequent rabies shot, and people who…Don’t.

Janie Hayes jumped back on her bike to finish 3rd overall in her second Trans Am Bike Race in 2017, a complete selfsupport cross-country race that begins in Oregon and ends in Virginia. What drives Janie ripples through all facets of her life.

Janie was a wild child – always in the dirt and playing hard with the boys. As her teenage years approached, this instinct was stifled by messages to fit in as a typical girl who lived a little more softly.

“I felt this conflict between being a girl and liking boys and wanting to respond to what I really was, which was a girl who wanted to be running around and sweating. I shut that part of myself down.”

It wasn’t until just before her senior year in college that this young girl reemerged. During a summer at home, wrestling with that feeling we all know too well at this point in life, marked by a confusion and emptiness of what’s next when all of a sudden it’s all up to us, drove her to consider attempting a marathon. She bought a book at the mall, trained like it told her to, and 6 months later finished her first 26.2 mile running race. This was the start of the last 20 years of racing in Janie’s life.

Starting with running, Janie quickly became addicted to what racing gave to

her, which was much more than a medal or the sight of a finish line.

“I like the urgency that racing gives to solving and addressing problems. I love riding my bike to ride my bike, but I also love the camaraderie. I love being pushed and challenged by other people; that’s another accelerator for me. So much of the comparison we get trapped in our daily lives is around our jobs, our social media feeds, our social life. This is one way to me that comparison is really healthy. Where you can you look at other people and think, ‘If they can do it, why can’t I at least try?’ I get that out of racing.”

Through 16 years of triathlons, running, and road bike racing, Janie has now found a true love and inspiration in long distance peddling.

Janie and her husband moved to Salida in 2012. At that time, it was becoming apparent that racing wasn’t filling Janie up with the good stuff like it once had. Despite multiple Ironman triathlons, including the Kona World Championships, and the opportunity to work with a coach to try to reach the professional level, racing had become wrapped up in pressure and expectation. Taking a break from it needed to be the next step. Janie needed a new direction and found it one night in a community movie night that was showing “Inspired to Ride,” a piece about the first Trans Am ride. She left that night knowing she had to at least try.

Janie describes her first year in this cross-country race, “I didn’t know what I was doing. This is a great adventure and a woman named Lael Wilcox won the

race outright. That was super inspiring when I realized that women can be really good at this kind of racing.”

She signed back up for 2017, hired a coach, trained specifically, and got 3rd overall. The gratification of seeing what was possible was back.

Today, Janie is planning to launch her own business to help women with the mental side of challenges.

“When you’re in the midst of it, I have two choices, I can try, or I can quit. Inevitably, you try, and it turns out you can do it, and you learn something about yourself.”

When this lesson is applied to all areas of life, the sky truly is the limit.

“Progress, not perfection, is an important goal to reach for. Especially for women because we grow up thinking we need to just nail it all. Doing this kind of racing allows me to be easier on myself because I get a better picture of can the reality of how it happens. It’s not about flogging yourself every day. It’s about taking good care of yourself,” Janie explains.

What Keeps Us On A Path of Passion?

What inspires us to attempt what may seem insurmountable? Janie believes it’s incremental progress.

“Getting up and doing something every single day, and some of the time it’s not enjoyable, but then the point where it all comes together arrives, and something so much bigger is accomplished.’ Janie Hayes strength and resilience surmount the voice that says no, and I think we can all use a little more of that magic.

“From what I can tell, it all begins with simply giving it a go.” say Janie.

Ialways knew I wanted to live in the mountains, ever since I was young,” says Amy Purdy, on her choice to move her Adaptive Action Sports organization to Copper Mountain in 2011, the year snowboarding was first announced as an official Paralympic sport. “We kept finding ourselves coming out to Summit County multiple times every winter for competitions and just fell in love with it here.”

The three-time Paralympic Snowboard medalist has been spending more time than usual in her home in Silverthorne this year, resting and recovering from a series of surgeries prompted by a life-threatening blood clot in February. The clot was caused in part by overuse of her prosthetic legs, and while Purdy says she doesn’t love being off her feet, she is loving the opportunity to rest in and appreciate the house she and her husband Daniel Gale bought and began renovating around the time of their wedding in 2015. “We get the best of both worlds here,” Purdy says. “We feel like we’re in the middle of the mountains – our house is surrounded by trees and we’re away from the noise – but at the same time Silverthorne is a great community and anything we need is right around the corner or we can hop on the highway in either direction.”

The home is about 12 miles from her Adaptive Action Sports headquarters at Copper Mountain and 14 miles from Breckenridge, where the Dew Tour has hosted an Adaptive Banked Slalom event in recent years in partnership with Toyota, one of Purdy’s longtime sponsors. Lo

Amy Purdy By Colin Bane

cal wildlife visit the yard regularly, and the property has been blessed by a fox that has taken up regular lookout duty from atop an old doghouse on the deck and has come to enjoy its own share of Purdy’s celebrity status: @kitthewildfox now has well over 12,500 Instagram followers of his own.

“One day we noticed this fox just sitting in the yard, pretty close to us, and we had a Japanese snowboarder staying with us who named him Kitsune,” Purdy says. “After that he started sleeping on the deck. He’d come up here and just be exhausted from, you know, surviving all day, and I’d think, “You and me both, Kit!’ Daniel takes really beautiful pictures of him, and when we started sharing the photos on Instagram people just fell in love with him.”

Purdy isn’t the only snowboard superstar living in Silverthorne: Slopestyle gold medalist Red Gerard, Big Air silver medalist Kyle Mack, and Chris Corning all competed in the PyeongChang Olympics. Purdy took silver in Snowboard-Cross and bronze in Banked Slalom in PyeongChang, following up on her Snowboard-Cross bronze from Sochi in 2014. And U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jimmy Sides also competed in PyeongChang: he came to Adaptive Ac

tion Sports to train with Purdy and Gale through their Wounded Warriors program after losing partial vision in his left eye and having his lower right arm amputated from an ordinance explosion in Afghanistan in 2012.

“It’s pretty wild to go over to the awesome Silverthorne Rec Center and see all these world-class athletes working out together,” Purdy says. “I still get a little star-struck.”

She hasn’t wrapped her mind around the reality that she has the most star power of them all. It all happened so fast. If you know the name Amy Purdy it could be from following her Paralympic adventures in Sochi and PyeongChang, but it could just as likely be from cheering for her on Dancing With the Stars and The Amazing Race, seeing her Super Bowl commercial for Toyota, watching her “Living Beyond Limits” TED Talk (it’s approaching 2 million views on YouTube), reading her bestselling 2014 memoir On My Own Two Feet: From Losing My Legs to Learning the Dance of Life, or catching her on Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want stadium tour. In the 19 years since meningococcal meningitis cut off circulation to her feet, forcing doctors to amputate both of her legs beneath her knees, she has worked

hard to shape one of the defining disasters of her life into a story of inspiration. One lesson about overcoming adversity she has taken to heart is that it is rarely a one-and-done process. In 2017, as she was preparing for PyeongChang at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, brachial neuritis began atrophying the nerves down both of her arms.

“When that happened in the year before the Paralympics, I was definitely asking, ‘Why me? Haven’t I dealt with enough already? Am I going to have to lose my arms, too?’ But then sometimes the universe gives you signs, and hope is such an important thing. That summer there was a big fire that threatened our neighborhood. We had to evacuate and everything, and we didn’t see our favorite little fox for 15 days, a lot of it while I was in the hospital. We had no idea if he was ever going to come back. Then, the night I got home from the hospital, Kit showed up! Shortly after that I got

to where I’d have one good day, then two or three good days, then good days outnumbering the bad days again, until I could start to see my way back to the Paralympics and everything else important to me.”

This year’s saga with the blood clot came just as she was scheduled to leave for a heli-boarding trip in Alaska with many of the best-known women in snowboarding. It was heartbreaking to have to cancel, and she says the experience has been even more frightening than the one that took her legs in the first place.

“I had three surgeries in two weeks and it’s just been the most emotionally gnarly thing because there’s so much uncertainty,” Purdy says. “I had some discomfort from my prosthetic, which happens. You don’t run to the ER every time your prosthetic is bugging you, because that’s something you get used to. A blood clot never even crossed my mind until it was almost too late. It could have

killed me! It’s interesting timing for me to reflect on, to have had such a major thing hit my life at 19 and now exactly 19 years later I’m getting hit with just as big of an uncertainty.”

She has been sharing openly on her social media accounts throughout the experience, trying to be honest with her fans about her fears and everything she’s going through, while also striving to stick to her own “Live Inspired” motto. “I actually think social media has helped me, because it makes me think of things a little bit differently than if I was just sitting here at home going through the depths of despair by myself,” Purdy says. “I’m conscious about not only sharing positive stuff, because I want to be real and authentic. I know there are other people dealing with pain, uncertainty, and fear, and the platform I have forces me to think: ‘How do I want to share this?’ My instinct is to really find the good in any situation. But I also want to tell the truth: this has been really hard. I’ve been terrified.”

For this first time in her life, she says, she’s been contemplating the one thing that was unthinkable to her at 19, when she first lost her feet: after overcoming all manner of other barriers, her snowboarding career might finally be coming to an end. She says she’s been shifting her focus to how she can help grow the sport of adaptive snowboarding and particularly how she can help bring more women into the pipeline. But she isn’t using the word “retirement” just yet, either, and she hasn’t ruled out competing in the 2020 Beijing Games.

“As an athlete there’s something amazing about these Olympic and Paralympic cycles we get into, where you know exactly what you’re doing for the next four years and what the goal is,” Purdy says. “It’s so hard to retire! We like waking up every day and knowing what we’re working towards. I have a successful motivational speaking career outside of competition now, so I don’t have to compete. I’ve made my mark. But if I can still do it after all of this, I will still do it. I want to do it! It gives me a sense of purpose. And I’d still love to have a gold medal to show for all of this.”

Ashley “Goose” Cameron By Kristen Lummis

At three years old, Ashley Cameron stood up to a goose. Although it was taller than her, she stood her ground, refusing to let the bigger bird intimidate her or the ducks that she was feeding. It was her first brush with what she calls her “spirit animal.”

Years later, serving in the Navy, Cameron earned the nickname “Mama Goose.” Working almost exclusively alongside men, she took care of them, making them wear sunscreen and drink water.

“I’d take care of them on the ship and they’d have my back when we were in port,” she explains. “They respected me because I could hold my own ground, but I was also like a mom to them.”

From her early start as a defender of ducks, to ten years serving as a Naval medic and surgical tech, to being the mother of two young children, empathy and caring come naturally to Cameron. These traits make her extremely effective in her latest endeavor — teaching yoga to military veterans.

INJURED AND DEPRESSED In 2013, Cameron was sexually and physically assaulted by her soon-to-be ex-husband. The battering left her with a traumatic brain injury, severe headache syndrome, and post traumatic stress disorder.

In the months that followed, Cameron struggled with depression, anxiety and feelings of worthlessness.

“For about 18 months (following the

assault), I was circling the drain, trying to find a purpose and to fill the void. The life I had been leading for so long was gone. It’s really hard. It is like losing somebody. You lose that person that was you,” she shares.

THE POWER OF YOGA Cameron’s first yoga experience came in the form of recommended recreational therapy. A long-distance runner and gym rat, she was skeptical.

“You mean you want me to do that thing that all those skinny ladies on Instagram do? Do I look like somebody that does that?” she remembers thinking.

Her first yoga class, in a lifeguard tower on a Southern California beach, was uncomfortable, especially when she was directed to close her eyes and rest in shavasana, or corpse pose. “I couldn’t get

still, I couldn’t get out of my head. I was so not present,” Cameron explains.

At this time, Cameron’s PTSD was so bad that she didn’t feel safe outside of her home, especially when she was with her kids. After seeing photos of parents doing yoga with their children, she realized this was something positive and fun they could do together at home.

Eventually, Cameron returned to the beach. And after a few more classes, something changed. Things that would normally have stressed her — like having her back to other people or the parking lot — weren’t having the same effect. She began to notice her breath and the grains of sand moving in the wind. She heard the crash of the waves and something within her released. At the end of the class, again resting in shavasana, Cameron cried for the first time in many months.

YOGA FOR VETERANS In 2015, Cameron was medically retired from the Navy. She felt unmoored and unsure of her purpose.

Immersed as she was in yoga, she re- alized that sharing yoga with other vet- erans could be her purpose and, with a scholarship, she began teacher training. A Colorado native born in Grand Junction and raised in Steamboat Springs and on the Front Range, in 2016 Cam- eron relocated her family to Grand Junc- tion and began free yoga classes for vets. Jim Worthington is one of her stu- dents. Retired from the Coast Guard, Worthington, like Cameron, was reluc- tant to try yoga. Now he credits her class- es with “helping me with get through the harder times in my life.”

Crystal Woolen, an Army veteran and a Peer Support Specialist with the Veterans Administration, shares that she “found a lot of hard won peace and freedom” in Cameron’s class.

“In her class I can be vulnerable and strong — anything I want to be in my space, on my mat, in my time,” Woolen shares.

As for Cameron, she still feels the loss of her military career —“it’s what I was born to do” — but thrives on the connec- tion with other veterans, which is some- times virtual. Cameron recently created a home-practice yoga DVD and YouTube channel. It is available free of charge to veterans and first responders.

Summing up her experience practic- ing and teaching yoga, Cameron shares this.

“Yoga teaches you about your body and your body teaches you about life. Through yoga, you learn how things affect you and how you can make changes, small or great, to heal.”

Cameron teaches free Yoga for Veterans classes at Yoga V Studio in Grand Junction. For more informa- tion on Cameron’s DVDs and You- Tube channel, please follow her on Facebook @GooseYoga or email her at ashley.m.goose@gmail.com.

Hannah Taylor By Bethany Taylor, and others who loved Hannah

Untamed New England

Several years ago, when my sister Hannah Taylor began dabbling in Adventure Racing with her close friends Olof and Whitney Hedberg, the Hedbergs happened to mention an Adventure Race back East called Untamed New England. “But…that’s me! I’m definitely New England, untamed!” said Hannah, gleeful to have had her New Hampshire roots and her Rocky Mountain athleticism suddenly converge. To be Peak Hannah, I think she’d have had a look on her face like Hobbes the Tiger going feral, a bike-grease stained Middlebury College hoodie over her rain-soaked running clothes, and a set of ski-skins in her—aggressively nailpolished—hands, and possibly giggled like wind-chimes to learn the phrase that described her perfectly.

To some, it might be important to list off all of the races she ran, the lines she

skied, the miles and hours she spent on any sort of trail in every sort of weather. I’m not doing that, because Hannah herself was never about the resume and pedigree. She was about the adventure. The 100 mile races she started to run in 2015 were just because—in Hannah-logic— the best way to extend a good hike. Time in the mountains, to Hannah, was time in the mountains, so more miles and more hours simply equaled more fun, more of being around what’s up there and out there. She explained the endurances races to our mother by saying, simply, “it’s just an extension of you teaching me to love and hike in the White Mountains. I’m doing all the same things, just with bigger mountains.”

But that’s just Hannah the Athlete, the Hanimal as some friends dubbed her. And that’s who most people knew— a tiny bad ass woman with friendly black dog and an incandescent smile who was always getting faster and stronger, finding new ways to test her own limits, and then new ways again when she found herself somewhat unstoppable. Although, I’ve learned that she would

stop her workouts and hike with friends if she found them on the same trail, because the companionship of sharing the woods and mountains with the other people was better than running really fast alone. She could always do the workout another time.

Hannah knew, better than many, how hard it is to make a life in a mountain town. They’re places and economies built for people to visit, to come for their adventures, but then go home to elsewhere to earn their money. Hannah, with characteristic tenacity and the student loans to accompany her New England education, hung on to make it work, to stay in the mountains. She barista-ed at Starbucks, landscaped at Keystone, sold madras shorts at J. Crew, and a few other shorter term jobs before learning how to live on what she earned juggling work for Summit Huts Association and as an assistant ski coach for Summit Nordic. That is the real endurance race—it takes a special person to make the balances and tradeoffs and choices to build a life, and not an escape, in these places which are rife with sexism and classism.

Photo by Randy Erickson at NAARS Championship in Iowa in 2017

Many people reading this may know Hannah or recognize her name from her tragic and dramatic death—on July 21, 2018, while out on a run with Olof in the Gore Range, near the Silverthorne Spire, Hannah rested her hand on a rock which came loose, sending her falling down a scree slope. A larger rock was dislodged above, and hit her in the head, killing her instantly. She is my sister, my best friend, and all who knew and loved her will never be whole again. However, as her sister, I am resolute that Hannah’s death only ever be a reason for more women, more girls to go to the woods, the waters, the wilds…the whatever that brings them joy, peace, adventure, and radiant glee. One of Hannah’s Nordic athletes, Noelle Resignolo, looked up to her coach with great admiration, she talks about her mentor and friend, “Hannah had been with Summit Nordic Ski Club for 14 years and there are no words that can describe

the impact she has had on our club. We all know that this club wouldn’t exist without her. She wasn’t just a coach with SNSC, she was the heart and soul of SNSC. Her impact on our athletes reached far beyond their ability to ski. She didn’t just help children become successful athletes, but successful and great people.

Her dedication to our athletes was undeniable. She kept a record of every wax used for every race over the last 10 years and cried every time we missed a wax on a race. She always wanted every athlete to have the best possible situation to perform and spent hours and hours making sure everyone had the perfect conditions no matter if you finish first or 30th.

She instilled values like hard work, integrity, truthfulness and a sense of adventure into our club. To say that Hannah was an SNSC coach is not enough. SNSC as a whole is a reflection of Hannah Taylor and her values. Without ever asking for the spotlight, she shaped SNSC to a reflection of herself, and every day going forward we will try to honor that reflection and be the best we can. We miss her every day.”

Hannah worked for Summit Huts Association for fourteen years. Her coworked Mike Zobbe remembers that “from the start, a few things became apparent – that she was smart, tough, independent thinking and not afraid to let you know what she thought.

She worked mostly in the office but

was never afraid of taking on a task in the field that involved running (literally) up to one of the huts. She kept her work and personal life separate – it took a few years before we met her partner Will, but she was also passionate about Summit Huts.

She cared about our mission and what we offered people. It was an utter shock to lose her to the mountains, she was irreplaceable to our organization. She had become a crucial part of our team, especially during the construction of the Sisters Cabin. Her legacy will always be a part of the fabric of Summit Huts and we will never forget her.”

I close this story remembering one of my sister Hannah’s favorite books, Terry and Renny’s Russell’s “On the Loose,” where the brothers write: “The point of it all is Out There, a little beyond the last rise you can barely see, hazy and purple on the sky. These pages are windows. And windows are to see through.”

I don’t know where Hannah is now, but I do know that her life is a window for us all to see through. And that is not enough, but the example of Hannah’s remarkable life is something,