Something to give them hope and call their own

When Brave the Shave family representative Taner Ohlsen saw an ambulance for sale while driving through Garrison, ND, it sparked an idea.

“I thought about the pink fire truck that drives around the area, giving hope to cancer fighters, especially women fighting breast cancer, and thought, how cool would it be to have a gold ambulance for kids fighting cancer to climb up in, push buttons, and play on?” he says. So he called the number on the for sale sign, and spoke to Sandra Nelson, board president of the Garrison-Max Ambulance District. After learning the price, he left the conversation intending to search for a sponsor to pay for it.

Sandra says she kept thinking about the conversation long after she hung up the phone. “I know it’s hard for a nonprofit to pay for something like this, but it’s also hard for a nonprofit to give it away, because it’s money that would be going back into the organization,” she says.

But she decided to bring the idea of donating the ambulance to the board at its monthly meeting, scheduled for the next day. “I didn’t even get it all out before everyone said, ‘yep, let’s do it,'” she says. “Everyone agreed that these kids needed this way more than we needed the money.” She says the board feels this is something that can give the kids a little hope, something they can call their own, and well worth donating.

The ambulance will be gold, the color that represents childhood cancer awareness, and feature cool, comic book-style pop art accents. The vehicle wrap was also generously donated thanks to United Printing of Bismarck. The ambulance is undergoing its transformation and will hopefully be completed by Brave the Shave’s flagship event in Bismarck, ND, on March 10.

Check out the video below of Sandra talking about the ambulance and what it means to donate it to Brave the Shave.