POSTED November 01, 2024
Client Cameo: Steve D.
Steve D. was born in North Olmsted. Ohio -- a far-western suburb of Cleveland, where he enjoyed playing in the Bradley Woods Reservation forest behind the house while growing up.
When his father retired from NASA in 1975, the family moved to Estes Park. They lived at 9,600 feet altitude on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, where Steve enjoyed hiking and snowshoeing out his back door! Steve’s love of maps sprang from his backpacking adventures with his father, who taught him the intricacies of maps and compasses.
He attended an alpine climbing school in Estes Park before college, where he learned technical “trad” climbing techniques.
He then studied physics and alternate energies at CSU, then traveled for five months, and returned to Estes Park, where he met and married his wife. They lived in Estes Park, Boulder, Longmont, and Castle Rock.
While initially supporting his young family, he worked in the old family-owned Denver-based chain of Hugh M. Woods (lumber/hardware/home center), eventually managing the Boulder store. He declined a management position in the newly expanded Washington, D.C. operations, and grew bored.
He then decided to go back to school and studied in a surveying and mapping degree program.
Work life then included:
- the Geometronics lab at the U.S. Forest service (with the BLM and USGS jointly)
- Boulder County’s new (in the ‘80s) Geographic Information Systems project (GIS – remember those initials) where he served as a cartographer and geodetic surveyor.
- The County Assessor’s Office, managing mapping and GIS. This also included work on spatial data interface and special mapping projects.
- Douglas County as a GIS analyst, continuing with several unique special projects in spatial data analysis and mapping systems. He also worked on wildland fire mitigation projects and dispersion modeling for simulated fire growth models.
- He worked as a consultant for federal agencies to handle some very unusual spatial data studies, such as security mapping for the ‘97 Denver G7 Summit, the Yucca Flats nuclear storage facility, the Rocky Flats weapons plant in an emergency evacuation mapping project, survivor locative mapping techniques in the 9/11 tragedy, and similar fascinating work. One such emergency response time mapping study netted a new, badly-needed ALS (Advanced Life Support) station in the Highlands Ranch area of Denver.
Steve and his wife raised a daughter, now 43, who lives on a ranch with her family near Antonito and Alamosa.
Sadly, Steve’s wife passed away in 2008. She was a writer of two novels, a column contributor the the Longmont newspaper, an equestrian trainer in both English and western styles, and volunteered as a trainer for disadvantaged children in hippotherapy horseback riding.
Steve is no stranger to medical challenges.
During a winter mountaineering trip in a fall, his leg was impaled. The impalement resulted in a near-loss of his leg due to necrosis. This was after a snakebite in the same leg in a previous trip.
Also on the medical challenge list:
- A head (TBI) and neck spinal injury resulting in multiple surgeries
- Congestive heart failure
- A heart attack while recovering from the above
- A spinal mass and leg paralysis
- Near loss of the use of one lung due to infection scarring, resulting in being on oxygen for years - 24 hrs/day, then, with exercise, night only, and finally, none.
He took an early medical retirement, and while trying to recover in a physical rehab facility, a life-threatening brain tumor was discovered. He had a marathon surgery to remove the brain tumor and was not expected to live through it!. He proved them wrong, but after many years of physical therapy, he then had a stroke!
Growing tired of major medical problems, ill health, and endless surgeries, he started researching how to improve his health, mobility, and immune system. He began walking as well working out daily with a great physical therapist, and under the supervision of his doctors. Steve lost 160 pounds by walking over 10,000 miles, was able to discard the need for oxygen, and strengthened his spine with hard workouts.
Finally well enough to live on his own again, he moved to Boulder. He continues his exercise and walking daily but does have some balance problems that warrant some help in cleaning his home and lifting such things as heavier groceries - hence the Cultivate Carry Out Caravan grocery service, which he has used for 2 1⁄2 years now.
Steve has been doing part-time remote volunteer work training as a map editor with the USGS. This feeds his deep love of mapping and GIS (remember those letters?).
He currently eagerly awaits security clearance to join the National Geodetic Survey’s lab at NOAA here in Boulder to work part-time on the nation’s most precise mapping, transportation and infrastructure geodetic survey coordinate control, using high precision surveying, GPS, mapping, etc., where he anticipates working first in archival geodetic data.
Steve is well into writing his autobiography to recount his very rewarding life working in mapping and in the wilderness -- as well as the major medical effort to return to a productive life.
Thank you, Steve, for being such a dependable and loyal client of ours over the past year and a half! Our staff and volunteer shoppers appreciate your attention to detail and precise grocery lists -- making shopping for you easy! We are glad you are alive, and thriving, and that Cultivate can assist you during this chapter of your incredible life!