As we have travelled along the journey to create the Light Rider Foundation, we are often asked about our story. What led us to establish the Light Rider Foundation?
We enjoyed our first dude ranch vacation in the summer of 2016. By the end of the week, we knew it was something we wanted to make a yearly experience. We loved Latigo Ranch, and it quickly became a place of peace, rest, and healing for us. However, in 2018 there was a wildfire that threatened the ranch, and our trip was cancelled. As a result, we found ourselves at a different Colorado ranch. During that week we met a family whose vacation was being sponsored by a private foundation. The father was a Navy pilot who had been injured in a terrible plane crash several years earlier, and this was the first family vacation since the accident. He had spent so much time in and out of the hospital, and this vacation was a way to reconnect with his children. It was such a blessing to watch them laugh and play together throughout the week. That experience has stayed with us since then.
The second motivator came three years ago when a young police officer in Texas was shot in the head during a routine traffic stop. He and his wife were friends of our daughter, and we had met them several years earlier just after he was accepted into the police academy. I remember how proud they both were that day! The family moved to Denver while the injured officer spent several months at Craig Hospital receiving treatment for his devastating brain injury. During those months we spent quite a bit of time with the family and saw the impact that this terrible tragedy had on his wife and children (not to mention the officer himself). We have continued to follow the story of their struggles since their return to Texas. Their lives will never be the same.
One day I mentioned that when those children were old enough and when the officer’s recovery would allow him to travel, I wanted to send them to Latigo Ranch for a summer vacation. We then remembered the family we had met some years earlier and decided we didn’t have to wait for this one family. We could provide the same thing to other deserving families.
And the Light Rider Foundation was born.
It is our hope that others will want to join us in this Journey to bring light into the lives of these families who give so much for so little in return.
Tim and Lana Sooter