Less than two weeks before Winter Park Ski Resort held its third annual Bucket Banked slalom snowboard event honoring a former Grand County resident and Winter Park Competition Center alum who died by suicide in 2021, three other Grand County residents died in horrific events that shocked and destabilized the community.
The Bucket Banked snowboard event and silent auction honors Benjamin Lynch, a “country boy” and avid snowboarder. Proceeds go to the Grand Foundation’s H.O.P.E. (Healing Opportunities through Prevention Efforts) Fund, created to support and expand Grand County mental health advocacy and services. The inaugural event in 2022 consisted solely of the competition and auction. But in 2023, Winter Park Resort, the Grand Foundation and community partners added a mental health expo, which this year grew exponentially, said Lauren Stokes, a local mental health provider and advocate.
No one could have anticipated the tragedies that would unfold in rapid succession before the April 13 event, lending it an unexpected weight and urgency.
On April 6, 11-year-old Octavio Ruiz Munoz Jr., known as Junior, died after the truck he was riding in reportedly slid on black ice at the Interstate 70 exit to Empire and ended up submerged in Clear Creek. According to officials, no one was able to save Junior, who was pinned between the truck and a boulder. Nor did he respond to CPR when he was finally extricated. He was declared dead upon arrival at an area hospital.
Then on the morning of April 9, Roger Hedlund, 64, a prominent community member who had owned four successful businesses, sat on 11 boards and was regarded as an exuberant adventurer and pillar of the community, died by suicide in Winter Park.
And on the afternoon of April 9, Dallas Lebeau, a 21-year-old skier who lived in Gilpin County but was a beloved team rider in Winter Park’s competition center, died on Berthoud Pass while attempting to jump Highway 40 on his skis, according to authorities.
To have three people spanning three generations in a tightknit community like Grand County die in such quick succession has countless people grieving, grasping for answers and straining a mental health system that is already seriously overloaded, says Jen Fanning, executive director of the Grand County Rural Health Network, a nonprofit alliance that works with healthcare, human service and government agencies to advocate for and support the health of the community.
In a phone call Friday, McKena Line, program director at Mind Springs Health in Granby, said the clinic doesn’t have exact data on how many new clients they’ve received in the past two weeks, but she is “very encouraged that folks are reaching out and getting the help they need” from not only Mind Springs but other mental health services in the county.
Mind Springs, Winter Park Resort, East Grand School District, East Grand Middle School, the Grand Foundation and several individual providers have rallied to help, though many of them and their employees are grieving.
Stokes and Fanning kept operations going while they mourned.
Fanning’s daughter was a close friend and classmate of Junior, and Fanning is friends with many East Grand Middle School teachers. She has had to watch her daughter and other kids grieve Junior’s death as well as his manner of death. Mind Springs offered to provide the school with therapists, however the school pulled in counselors and social workers from the other schools in the district. But some of the teachers were also friends with Hedlund. Or had kids who knew Lebeau. Or both. Nevertheless, Fanning said, “they said let’s talk about this, let’s do this. They taped a piece of paper on the wall where the kids could write little memories” of Junior.
Fanning was surprised to hear few kids went to see the counselors yet understands “sometimes kids need each other” in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. She also knows from 17 years with the rural health network that “the weeks and months to come, as we hit milestones, as we hit birthdays, can be hard.” The rural health network is determined to continue working to educate the community on mental health services, reduce the stigma in accessing mental health care and offer suicide prevention and awareness efforts to anyone including those impacted by recent events, she added.
Supporting Winter Park Resort’s 2,000 employees
Stokes said her family is very close with LeBeau’s family, “so it’s been rough. Yeah. For sure.” But over the past week and several days, she has provided “some acute care,” trying to help mobilize crisis services and leaning on her networks to bring additional providers to Grand County. When the losses “stacked up” for the community, she said the Bucket Banked slalom and the mental health expo, which she helps organize, were “particularly relevant and timely.”
From Weds. April 10 through Sat. April 13, Winter Park Resort, Mind Springs Health, and two independent providers offered on-site counseling at the resort to any employee. Community members were also invited to share their feelings, said Liza Tupa, director of resilience and mental well-being for Winter Park’s parent company, Alterra. At least one independent provider will return on a weekly basis to continue counseling. And April 13, Winter Park held a gathering for friends and family of comp center coaches to memorialize Lebeau and lead them through a grief processing session, said Jen Miller, resort spokesperson.
But Lebeau’s death was only one piece of the trauma affecting resort employees.
Many Winter Park employees have been at the resort and in the community for a long time, Miller said. “So they knew Roger. And there was the car accident. It piles up. When traumatic things happen it affects people in different ways.” One way the resort helps is by providing any employee who needs it a few paid visits with a mental health provider. Mental health care vouchers for community members are available through the H.O.P.E. fund. But supply isn’t infinite.
Fanning said the rural health network issued 20% more vouchers last year than in previous years, which was four times that of pre-pandemic rates. In 2023, 83% of vouchers were for mental health, and year-to-date this year, 90% of all vouchers have been for mental health, a 167% jump over last year. And Stokes added the organization is currently running a fundraising campaign to raise $100,000 to meet the projected need of the voucher program for the remainder of 2024.
“Our programs are in danger of closing because we can only get local funding, and need has increased significantly due to lack of a community care clinic or school based health center,” Fanning said. “We are one of five counties in the state without them,” she added, “yet our community needs them more than ever.”
Help for a survivor of a loved one’s death by suicide
Tupa said it “shakes people to their core” when they find out Hedlund was on the board of the Grand Foundation and one of the biggest supporters of the H.O.P.E. Fund. “But what I talk about is that you just don’t know what a person might be going through in their personal life, in their emotional life, in their physical and medical life. We just don’t know what he was facing.”
Hedlund’s wife, Michele Murray-Hedlund, wants people to remember him as he was: a generous soul who gave to everybody — gave his time, his money, his insight and knowledge.
Greg McFadden, a former Grand County resident and one of Hedlund’s close friends, added, “He was everyone’s hero. A true leader in community, business, adventure. And the life of the party. You always knew when Roger was in the room.”
Now, Murray-Hedlund needs her own mental health support, and she’s getting it. Friends came to her aid right after the tragedy happened. More arrived as the hours and days passed.
“I know she has people with her almost 24/7 if not 24/7, right now,” Fanning added. “But I can’t imagine, you know, in a week or two weeks, after the memorial is over, when everybody gets back to their lives. Of course, we have memories. But it’s daily minute-by-minute reminders for the loved ones.” That is its own mental health challenge.
Murray-Hedlund is actively pursuing healing through different modes of therapy. Shortly after Roger died, she consulted an energy worker. On Wednesday, she started therapy with a provider in Grand County. She’ll do remote therapy with a provider in Aspen.
“People are gonna grieve at their own pace and heal at their own pace and we just hope we have what they need when they reach out, immediately,” Fanning said.