Mar 15, 2006 11:11 pm US/Mountain
Woman To Raise Money For SIDS Research On Slopes
by Andrea Lopez
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) ―
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Freda Nieters will attempt to ski 75,000 vertical feet to raise research money.
CBS4
A personal tragedy inspired a Summit County woman to ski 75,000 vertical feet to raise money for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome research.
Freda Nieters, 74, lost her 5-month old grandson to SIDS in January of 2005. She was babysitting Zachary when she put him down for an afternoon nap.
"Little Zach was a little fussy so I held him and rocked him and he fell asleep," Nieters said.
Zach would never wake up, even though emergency room doctors tried to revive him for an hour.
"They found a little pulse but they could not resuscitate him and finally had to turn off all the machines and Katie was left rocking her little baby boy," Nieters said.
Zach's death made Nieters determined to help save future lives and plans to use her athletic abilities as a skier to raise money.
"I have to do some fundraising so we can have money for research," Nieters said.
She has skied since she was 3-years old because it was her main form of transportation growing up in Norway. Nieters eventually became a two-time Norwegian national ski champion. After moving to Summit County, she taught at Keystone for 30 years and still teaches.
"I'm just grateful I can be a part and do something that might help," Nieters said.
Her goal is to ski about 40 runs at Keystone on March 29.
"It means everything," Nieters said. "I won't know, but if it could collectively save one baby's life, it's worth everybody's effort."
The Guinness Book of World Records plans to monitor Nieter's ski-a-thon on March 29. She could set a world record for the oldest female to ever ski that many runs in one day.
In 2001, Nieters skied 70,000 vertical feet to help underprivileged children learn to ski.
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