Archive for Monday, March 29, 2010
Photo by Matt Stensland
Members of The Rubber Duckies team jump into the water during the seventh annual Penguin Plunge on Saturday.
Penguin Plunge in Steamboat a chilly thrill
Fundraiser brings in more than $83,000 for CT scanner
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Routt County Sheriff Gary Wall is carried out of the water by deputies after the Sheriff’s Office’s plunge at the seventh annual Penguin Plunge fundraiser on Saturday at Catamount Ranch and Club.
Anna West jumps into the frigid waters of the Lake Catamount pool during Saturday’s Penguin Plunge while her Starbucks teammates, from right, Christy Hobbs, Matt Hoskins and Allison Kerr watch.
Steamboat Springs With six jumps into just-above or just-below freezing water behind them, Stan Urban and his Land Title Guarantee Co. team came to Saturday’s seventh annual Penguin Plunge with something a little different.
A popular winner of the Penguin Plunge costume contest, Urban and Land Title acted out one of Steve Martin’s most memorable “Saturday Night Live” skits, a song-and-dance number about King Tut. With a saxophone-playing mummy jumping out of a wooden coffin toward the end of Land Title’s skit, the six-person team clenched the best costume award.
Penguin Plunge is a fundraiser for the Healthcare Foundation for the Yampa Valley, an organization that helps raise money for the Yampa Valley Medical Center. Participants raised money and jumped as teams into a 33 degree pool at Catamount Ranch and Club.
“We use this as a team-building exercise, but we also feel it’s how we give back to the community,” Urban said. “We’re helping out the hospital, and good grief, as many times as I’ve been in that emergency room, it’s helpful to me.”
Saturday’s event raised just more than $83,000, up from $65,700 raised at the event in 2009. Seventeen teams made the chilly plunge, racing in costume across the short pool to the comfort of a hot tub across the deck.
Funds from the seventh annual Penguin Plunge will go toward the purchase of a new CT scanner for the hospital’s diagnostic imaging department. Used in a variety of diagnostic tests, the scanner would cost about $1.7 million. A challenge grant from an anonymous donor will match every dollar above the Plunge’s 2009 net proceeds of $58,000. The fundraising goal for this year’s event was $88,000.
Taking second place in the costume contest was the YVMC Lab. Members of the department jumped as “The Parrot Heads.” They wore parrot hats and each dressed as a food item named in Jimmy Buffett’s song “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”
“We’re not only inspired by Jimmy Buffett, we’re inspired by teamwork and having fun and being a friendly workplace,” laboratory support technician Carol Connolly said.
Members of the hospital’s radiology department jumped as “Team of Hearts.”
Staff members were cards and department head Mary Jo Wiedel played the queen of hearts.
Paula Golden, director of YVMC’s emergency department, led the jumping wave Saturday. Representing “Dave’s Dippers,” Golden has been participating in Penguin Plunge since its beginning. For the past six years, she has jumped in memory of Dave Linner, the flight nurse who initially suggested the fundraiser and was killed in an air ambulance crash in January 2005.
“It’s for Dave and for all the good things this has done. This has become a tremendous fundraiser,” Golden said.
The plunge has been a way to get needed equipment for the hospital, she added.




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