Ali Simonds of Belfast is on a mission to swim no less than a mile in a unique Maine lake daily in August.
The College of Maine graduate pupil’s swims subsequent month are a part of a fundraising marketing campaign for LifeFlight of Maine, the state’s solely emergency medical air transport service.
However they’re additionally half of a bigger mission for Simonds that she’s pursued over the previous 2 1/2 years since her father’s demise from pulmonary fibrosis in 2019: swimming a mile in each Maine lake and pond that’s bigger than 50 acres. As of Monday, she had swum in 100 Maine lakes.
“He was my greatest cheerleader, each once I swam and thru all the pieces in my life,” she stated.
Simonds, 38, is in her second yr of graduate college within the College of Maine’s Communications Sciences and Problems Division. She hopes to grow to be a speech language pathologist and work with adults who’ve suffered traumatic mind accidents.
LifeFlight of Maine’s helicopters, airplanes and ambulances care for everybody from untimely infants to folks with complicated traumatic accidents and burns. LifeFlight cared for greater than 2,300 sufferers in 2021 and has transported greater than 34,000 sufferers because it was launched in 1998, in line with the group.
The group’s 2022 Cross for LifeFlight marketing campaign, for which Simonds is elevating cash, has a $400,000 fundraising aim. It can be used to improve the group’s helicopters, purchase wanted on-board tools, fund scientific training and coaching applications throughout the state and enhance Maine’s aviation infrastructure.
Pre-pandemic, Cross for LifeFlight was often called the Isleboro Crossing. The fundraiser was an in-person 5K swim or paddle throughout Penobscot Bay. Like most issues, nevertheless, the occasion needed to be modified in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, the fundraiser is a customizable outside journey problem that runs your complete month of August. Members set their very own targets and might work alone or as a workforce doing any type of outside exercise, akin to mountain climbing, biking, swimming, paddling or operating.
Simonds has a $1,000 fundraising aim. As of Monday, 14 folks had donated $759.
Simonds’ father, Phil, first proposed the thought of swimming in each Maine lake and pond in jest in 2018. She initially dismissed the suggestion, till he began spreading the information to everybody who walked into his room at Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital in Boston, the place he was receiving therapy for pulmonary fibrosis.
She adopted the problem after her father died on Christmas Eve 2019, however she narrowed the aim right down to the roughly 1,500 lakes and ponds in Maine which might be bigger than 50 acres as a result of Maine has greater than 6,000 lakes and ponds in complete.
“He was my favourite particular person,” she stated. “He was a goofy, bizarre man who all the time had one thing fascinating to say. He had a ardour for serving to folks and was all the time prepared to help.”
Phil Simonds was a firefighter for the Waterville Fireplace Division for 29 years, 15 of which he spent as hearth captain.
Along with honoring her father and elevating cash for LifeFlight, Simonds is utilizing her swimming quest to champion water security for swimmers and boaters and advocate for clear water. Simonds collects water samples from each physique of water she swims in and hopes to have them examined for microplastics.
