Thomas Daly was driving a snowcat at Sierra-at-Tahoe last winter when he hit a buried stump and was thrown into the windshield, crushing his neck. He shattered his C1 through C4 vertebrae, resulting in a spinal fusion and laminectomy (a surgical procedure to remove the arched back piece of vertebrae) from his C1 to T2 vertebrae, over half of his spinal cord. All the bones in the back of his neck were removed, and his neck was put back together with 14 screws and two rods. He was paralyzed from the neck down.
“I couldn’t wiggle my toes or thumbs, I couldn’t even press the call button to ask for help,” said Daly, a 38-year-old South Lake Tahoe resident. “I spent 2 and a half weeks not knowing if I would get back. I didn’t know what I would regain. I was being spoon-fed. I couldn’t move anything from the neck down. I was pretty much just an open mouth and eyes.”
After more than a week in ICU and another month and a half in a rehabilitation facility at Renown, Daly gradually began to relearn how to walk, use a fork, and brush his teeth. Almost 2 years after his accident, Daly has been diagnosed with quadriplegia and cross-cord syndrome, and an incomplete spinal cord injury, which means doctors don’t know how much movement he will recover. He is still in physical and occupational therapy.
“All of my four limbs are still affected,” he said. “I will forever be dealing with it … A lot of my body doesn’t get the right signals. I have hypertension, a lot of crazy stuff. It’s been quite the process.”
One of Daly’s goals is to get back to snowboarding. And so, in October, when he was at the Made in Tahoe Festival at Palisades Tahoe, he bought two $10 giveaway tickets at the Scotty Lapp Foundation booth and dropped them into the Palisades season pass jar. When he learned he won, he was overcome with emotion.
with $20,000 worth of donated material. The park is now permanently closed after the landowner, Evo, began
remodeling the motel and Blue Agave building. The foundation received TTUSD approval in the spring to move
forward with a permanent skatepark nearby.
“I couldn’t believe it. I had to sit down,” said Daly, who had recently been cleared to snowboard. “This whole healing journey, a lot of it is mental. [Winning] showed me this is open to me now, to keep going. I probably would never buy a pass at Palisades, and now it’s wide open for me … I had an overall feeling of gratitude, of new beginnings. That is what I had been looking for.”
When Amy Lapp, co-founder and CEO of the Scotty Lapp Foundation, saw Daly after winning the pass, he had his hands on his head and looked like he was about to cry.
“You would have thought I had given him the moon,” she said. “He gave me the biggest hug and said, ‘You have no idea what this means to me.’”
Lapp, who started the foundation after her 16-year-old son, Scotty, passed away in a ski accident at Alpine in February 2022, said that she was not surprised that someone deserving won the Palisades pass.
“Every year we end up having a really special story that goes with the Palisades pass,” she said. “Almost every time we draw from the Palisades jar, it has Scotty written all over it. I know he has a hand in it.”
A little later, Daly returned to the Scotty Lapp Foundation booth with his fiancé. She hugged Lapp and told her there was yet another reason why winning the pass was so meaningful to him. The couple owns Tahoe Pops, a fresh-fruit popsicle company based in South Lake that they started in 2018. There is a Tahoe Pops freezer at Gold Coast, the mid-mountain lodge at Palisades, but the pair had never seen it since they were never able to buy a pass.
“What stuck with me and why this is so special is that Scotty loved nothing more than to help people in little ways,” said Lapp, recalling a time when her son made her pull over while driving because he saw someone in a wheelchair who needed help crossing the street. “It’s no coincidence that Thomas won. What I have learned since Scotty died, I have had the craziest things happen and I know he has a hand in it. It helps us feel really close to him.”
Daly said he plans to honor Scotty by creating the Scotty Pop, which will be either Red Bull or sour gummy worm flavor, two of Scotty’s favorite things.
Winning the Palisades Tahoe pass has inspired Daly to complete five new records for the Guinness World Book of Records. He wants to set the record for the fastest recorded speed on a snowboard for a quadriplegic, the longest rail slide on a snowboard for a quadriplegic, the first quadriplegic to become certified to scuba dive, the first quadriplegic to complete a solo skydive, and the highest cliff jump by a quadriplegic.
“The connection between Palisades, the Lapps, and myself inspired me to push farther and deeper into my healing journey and to push and do more,” said Daly. “If I can complete these World Guinness records, I hope to set a bar and inspire other people going through the same kind of injury … If I knew it would be possible, it would change a lot.”
His goal is to complete the two on-snow records at Palisades this winter, and the others in the spring and summer. He has set up a GoFundMe with a goal of $5,000 to help him with the cost of certifications.
The Scotty Lapp Foundation is raising funds to build a skatepark in Tahoe City, a dream of Scotty’s. In May, the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District unanimously approved allowing the foundation to move forward with the next steps for building a skatepark near Tahoe Lake Elementary School. Lapp hopes to break ground in the spring. The pop-up skate park built in 2022, which was located behind Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City, had to be permanently disassembled this fall since the landowner, Evo, is remodeling the former Blue Agave building and neighboring motel.
All proceeds from the Made in Tahoe raffles go toward the skatepark and scholarships for freeride skiers and snowboarders. Last year, the foundation gave $20,000 in scholarships to almost 30 athletes.
“It’s hard to know when people are struggling and need something positive to help them in their journey,” said Lapp. “Somehow this pass usually ends up going to someone who really makes a difference. It’s heartwarming and humbling, and it feels really good.”
The Scotty Lapp Foundation is the beneficiary of the Dec. 12 Alpenglow Sports Winter Speaker Series at the Olympic Village Inn. Donations to the foundation can also be made at scottylapp.org.
