Jennifer Gish: Goal of 200-mile bike ride is raising awareness for organ donation

Goal of 200-mile bike ride is raising awareness for organ donation

Sara Strope has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and conquered five Ironman competitions, but none of it will mean as much as the 200-mile bike ride she starts with her father Thursday morning.

Because maybe when someone sees a picture of them together on social media and realizes her father, Harold Strope, is pedaling up the Berkshires with a heart he wasn't born with, they'll sign up to be an organ donor.

In 1995, when her father received his new heart after a virus caused congestive heart failure, there were 40,000 people on the U.S. organ transplant list.

Back then, Sara was 16 and handling her countless school activities and Advanced Placement courses while trying to play varsity volleyball, work part time and take the bus back and forth to Boston to visit her father in the hospital.

There were a few "moments in the courtyard" at school where she couldn't handle the pressure, but the staff, including Audrey Koester, the former head librarian at Albany Academy for Girls who was her adviser in high school, helped to settle her.