Press
Destroyed Utah Summer Games medal is replaced for Christmas gift
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Boy's prized Summer Games medal replaced
RICH JOHNSON
rjohnson@thespectrum.com
CEDAR CITY - After hearing his name called, Kaidden Larsen shyly walked to the front of the room.
Almost embarrassed, he stood before the members of the Thunderbird Athletic Club during a weekly luncheon, as Utah Summer Games Director Casey McClellan handed him the replacement for his lost treasure.
"He didn't know," said Bridget Larsen, Kaidden's mother. "He was pretty surprised. I think he was kind of embarrassed, too, but I think he was pretty excited that he was getting it back."
Excited would almost be an understatement.
Kaidden had claimed a gold medal in the 9-year-old freestyle wrestling competition at the Utah Summer Games last June. It was one of many trophies he had earned through athletics during his life - and one of many he lost in the fire that destroyed the family's home in November.
Among all the possessions the fire had stolen, the only thing he wanted back was his USG gold medal.
"It means so much to me," he said later last week, the inflection of his voice stressing his eagerness. "That's all I worried about when our house burned down."
Something like a sports medal may seem simple, but to Kaidden it was almost as if the hard work that had earned him the medal had finally been restored.
"Little things that don't mean anything to anybody could be the biggest thing for a child," Bridget said. "I thought it was pretty cool that they would take the extra step to present him with something that meant a lot to him.
Tragedy
Bridget returned home from her job at Robert Nakken's doctor's office on the afternoon of Nov. 9 to a startling discovery.
As she opened the door, smoke was released from inside of her home, and she could hear the smoke alarm sounding. The family's house in the Ashdown Forest subdivision, which her husband, Travis, had built from the ground up, was ablaze in what she said was later deemed to be an electrical fire.
She immediately called Travis, who had taken Kaidden on a Scout trip to Nellis Air Force base. Leaving Kaidden behind, Travis immediately drove back to Cedar City.
When he pulled up to the home, he was relieved to know that Bridget was safe, along with the couple's three other children, Jaxon, 6, Zander, 4, and Layla, 10 months.
The shell of the Larsen family's house remained intact, but the inside was decimated, along with the family's possessions.
"You lose your personal belongings, but nobody got hurt," Travis said. "Everything else can be replaced or fixed.
"Any time there's a kind of life lost, it's much more tragic," he added. "In our case we were very fortunate. My wife actually opened the door to the fire, and she discovered it. We were pretty fortunate to have them and the two younger boys with us from what the fire chief said."
Wrestling prodigy
Kaidden walked over to a shelf in the front room of the home where the Larsen family is temporarily living.
The bookcase contains four lone football trophies, all that remains from what his mother said was once a plethora of athletic awards. All of his wrestling medals are gone, destroyed in the fire.
Bridget said Kaidden has been wrestling since he was 4 years old, and as such he had gotten quite a few.
"I like to get the medals and to verse other people I haven't versed before and learn lots of new moves," he said.
But none meant as much to him as the one he claimed last June.
Before the championship match, Kaidden had decided it was going to be his last. He was going to put wrestling behind him and start playing basketball.
"The day he actually won that, he told his dad that was the last day he was going to wrestle," Bridget said. "(He said to ) Take a lot of pictures of him because he was going to wrestle and win a gold medal that day."
He did.
"I was really happy," Kaidden said. "It was fun to succeed in something that took a long time to do. When I was standing out there, I had a cheesy smile and I'm usually not like that."
Since reclaiming his medal, however, Kaidden has decided that maybe he isn't done with wrestling just yet. He said he might continue, saying maybe one day he might wrestle for Canyon View High School.
"They've asked me to come watch them wrestle," Kaidden said. "I haven't gotten to go do that yet, But I will."
Community support
Travis and Bridget are overwhelmed with the kindness the community has shown them since the fire.
They said residents, some they don't even know, have brought everything from dinners to shoes for their children.
"It shows what the community is about," Bridget said. "I think the people that live here, they're good people."
Nakken, she added, came to see them the night of the fire and immediately handed over the keys to his home in the Cove area. Nakken had recently moved, and he told the Larsens they could stay there until they finished rebuilding their home.
"I don't know if you could ever write enough thank you letters or bake enough cookies," Travis said. "Everybody in the community has just been phenomenal. ... (Nakken) said anything you guys need let me know, and he handed us the keys to this house. That's the kind of people that live in this community."
Living away from their neighborhood has been hard on the children, especially Kaidden, who attends Fiddler's Elementary School. But Bridget added the kids of the community have done a good job trying to get him involved in neighborhood activities.
"It's been pretty frustrating," she said. "The little things are the things that mean the most. ... We're rebuilding that house, so we'll be back there with everybody."
Travis is going to gut the entire interior of the house, she said, keeping the outer shell of the home.
'As important to us'
Bridget saw how much her son missed his medal, so she was determined to get him a new one.
She approached Mindy Benson, Southern Utah University's executive director of alumni relations, and asked her how she could get a replacement.
"It was just in casual conversation," Benson said. "She knew I had done opening ceremonies and said 'He's sure missing his medal, is there something we could do?'"
Benson approached McClellan and asked him what they could do. In the end, they decided to present him with a new one during the SUU athletic club luncheon on Dec. 10.
"We didn't set out to make a big deal, and we certainly didn't want to draw attention," Benson said. "When she explained to me how much that medal meant to him, I thought we needed to make it as important to us as it is to him."
When he heard that Kaidden was considering switching to basketball, SUU women's coach Steve Hodson delightedly threw in a package of gifts from his team.
He gave Kaidden a jersey, T-shirts and wristbands, which Kaidden wore proudly during an interview with The Spectrum & Daily News.
And while Bridget and Travis were happy to see their son's medal restored, they said they were reminded again of what's really important.
"He's a competitor at anything he does, and anything he does he's good at," Bridget said. "He's also a good student and citizen. Those are the things we're the most proud of. Those kinds of things make you realize the things that are the most important that you can't get back."
- The Spectrum & Daily News
