After only 20 minutes of being in Heber City, Dr. Gregory Maassen made just as many friends. 

The Dutch cyclist threw himself into endless conversations with strangers at the Wasatch County Library on the sunny afternoon in mid June. He quizzed one woman outside by asking her which famous actor from the 1960s he was named after — Gregory Peck — and joked with some senior citizens by calling them patrons of the county’s “junior center.” The smile permanently etched on Maassen’s face attracted attention as much as his orange safety vest.

But the biggest conversation starter was Maassen’s e-bike, which had yellow clogs affixed to the back — his “marketing device” — and was outfitted with everything Maassen needed to survive his cross-country trek across the United States. 

Maassen, who lives in Washington, D.C., after immigrating from the Netherlands, began his 5,800-mile journey in West Palm Beach, Florida, in March. He’s headed to Los Angeles, on track to arrive in about five weeks. He made a pit stop in Wasatch County on June 11 after pedaling from Duchesne County on Thursday morning.

“I went through Tabiona Valley, which is beautiful, but I forgot about the serious incline at the end. That is 4,000 feet,” he laughed. 

That’s where his e-bike comes in handy, reaching speeds up to 28 mph. Maassen’s still certainly getting a workout in, burning an average of 2,500 calories per day. His e-bike, meanwhile, consumes four batteries a day and gives him a boost — one comparable to half the power of a Tour de France cyclist.

“When people say that e-biking is cheating, maybe it is, but it’s very good exercise,” Maassen said.

For some, like Maassen, e-biking is an accessible gateway into exercising. It served as a way for him to treat his peripheral neuropathy, an umbrella term for conditions that affect nerves outside of the brain or spinal cord. Maassen is biking across the country to raise awareness about these conditions.

There are many types of peripheral neuropathy and about 30 million Americans live with it, explained Dr. Ahmet Hoke, director of the Merkin Peripheral Neuropathy Research Laboratory at John Hopkins Medicine. 

Some causes of peripheral neuropathy include diabetes, chemotherapy, vitamin deficiency, chronic alcohol use and some antibiotics and medications. 

In Maassen’s case, he was on a hike in South Africa in 2017 when he ran into a nest of ticks and was “inundated” with larvae.

“They were so microscopic, so small, those things that were on my skin, including my derriere,” he said. “My wife had to become a surgeon. I think we counted more than 80.”

Some time after the ticks were removed, Maassen’s body began to burn all over as if he had severe sunburns. His vocal cords began to hurt and it became difficult to speak. He was pushed from doctor to doctor who could not explain his condition. Some chalked it up to mental illness.

“Because of all the neurological stuff that was happening to me, I got those sensations for free. I became very depressed, and I became very anxious about the fact that no one could help me. There you are, this very active, healthy person, and for all I know, I could have been institutionalized,” he said.

Maassen was “bedridden” by the time he was finally referred to Dr. Hoke in 2019, who diagnosed him with peripheral neuropathy. That’s when Hoke told Maassen his condition could be treated with exercise. 

“Gregory had an unusual type of neuropathy. His was that his own immune system literally attacked his nerves after an infection. But that doesn’t continue. It’s not a progressive type of neuropathy. So, once the damage was done, the immune system resets itself, and then, it’s going to take some time for the nerves to regenerate,” Hoke said. “One thing we knew was that if the patients exercise during that time, their recovery is faster and more complete, and that’s what Gregory took to heart.”

Maassen started e-biking. His quality of life was so changed by the exercise that he later came up with the idea to partner with John Hopkins Medicine on a cross-country e-biking tour to raise awareness about peripheral neuropathy, making stops at universities, speaking to the media or simply striking up conversation with strangers.

The hope is that increased awareness leads to increased government funding for peripheral neuropathy research, which Hoke said is “extremely limited” despite the prevalence of the conditions.

Hoke said diabetic peripheral neuropathy is most common, followed by peripheral neuropathies with unknown causes. These idiopathic conditions make up 30% of all peripheral neuropathies.

“We suspect the majority of them have complex genetic mechanisms, either unknown new genes or perhaps subtle mutations in two or three genes that bring it out, so we’ve just started sequencing the whole genome of these patients,” Hoke said.

Sequencing the genome of one patient costs several thousand dollars, he added.

“The diseases that kill people get a lot of attention, and there’s often good advocates for these diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s,” Hoke said. “Peripheral neuropathy doesn’t kill, but it makes people’s lives miserable.”

Maassen did his first e-bike cross-country tour for peripheral neuropathy in 2022. 

He stopped in Wasatch County then, too, eating at Cafe Galleria in Midway, riding the Heber Creeper and biking on U.S. 40 all the way to Sundance and back, just for fun.

This tour, however, he spent much of his weekend biking to Salt Lake City and back to appear on a podcast.

Surprisingly, Maassen has not gotten into traffic accidents or even close calls on either tour. 

This year, his biggest fiascos were in Pueblo, Colorado, where someone tried to steal his bike, and he had a late-night campsite run-in with a skunk hungry for scraps of his chicken dinner.

“When a skunk visits you in the tent, you stay very silent. You don’t move. But it was very cold, and I urgently needed to address the pressure of my bladder,” Maassen said, gravely. “So, there I am. The skunk is chewing on my stuff. I cannot move, and I urgently need to go to the toilet. I was stuck.”

There have also been many cockroaches and “exploding toilets” on the trip. If Maassen cannot find a campground with electricity to charge his e-bike batteries, he spends the night at a motel, preferably cheap, whose owners won’t make a fuss if he brings an e-bike into his room.

He stayed at Mac’s Motel in Heber City over the weekend, a three-star motel that exceeded his low standards.

What has kept Maassen going on this trip has been the prospect of coming to Utah. He called Wasatch County “cycling paradise” on Thursday and was looking forward to taking in the views on a stretch of U.S. 50, “The Loneliest Highway,” between Delta — which he biked to on Monday — and Baker, Nevada.

Beyond the views, the most gratifying part of both tours has been meeting others with peripheral neuropathy and reassuring them that they are not alone. 

“My idea is to inject a lot of humor and hope into this program,” he said. “If you are afflicted with a condition like mine, it’s not always easy to be optimistic.”

Learn more about Maassen’s journey, follow the route and donate to peripheral neuropathy research at ebiketour.org.

The post Cross-country cyclist stops in Wasatch County to raise awareness of peripheral neuropathy appeared first on Park Record.

Lyndee Scott was making bookmarks with kids in the Wasatch County Library courtyard on Saturday morning as part of the library’s summer kickoff party when her 17-year-old daughter, Trinity, told her she’d seen a bottle with an attached note addressed to law enforcement close to a nearby bush.

“I looked over, and there were police there. I was like, ‘That’s really weird.’ I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then, more and more police started coming,” Lyndee said.

Lyndee and Trinity were volunteering with Kathy Carr, vice board chair of the Wasatch Community Foundation, which was a sponsor of the event. Carr said the nonprofit’s booth, right next to The Pretzel Connection’s, was about 20 feet away from the bottle. 

Carr noticed library director Juan Lee talking to the police officers. A few minutes later, library staff and police calmly instructed attendees to evacuate into the library, keeping away from the windows. Scott said they were inside the library for about an hour. 

During that time, the Heber City Police Department and Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office deployed a K-9 trained to sniff out explosives and ammunition. The K-9 gave a positive indication on the bottle. 

“I was able to see that, when the dog alerted, he alerted twice and then jumped up in the bush,” Lyndee said. “My daughter was saying, ‘Oh my gosh. Is this thing going to explode?’ It was crazy and nerve-wracking just waiting, wondering if we’re going to make it out.”

Carr said there were about 300 people at the event, many families with toddlers. 

Keeping the children entertained and blissfully unaware of the situation as they waited in the library was its own challenge.

“(Trinity) went and helped little kids look for books during (the lockdown) and then came back and was … getting updates,” Lyndee said.

Carr, meanwhile, spoke to some of the younger children about what role a K-9 plays in law enforcement and pointed out how “cool” it was to see one in action, protecting its community.

All the while, she was mentally preparing herself to, at a moment’s notice, push over tables in the library to use as barricades.

Carr said emergency drills she’d done in her past roles as a teacher and an organizer and accreditor of after school programs prepared her for that moment. 

“That mom side of me and that teacher side of me kicked in a little bit,” she said. “It’s just in my nature to make sure the kids are OK. That’s the No. 1. Make sure they’re calm and that this isn’t going to be traumatic for them.”

Police instructed patrons and staff to evacuate the library after the K-9 checked each car in the parking lot. At that time, police were also closing off 1200 South.

Police Chief Parker Sever said that one car was found with a legally obtained gun and ammunition in it but that it was unrelated to the incident.

Carr went home and waited for about two hours for an update about when she could return to the library to retrieve the belongings she’d left behind. 

The Heber Valley resident of four decades’ first assumption about the bottle was that it had been a prank because “it’s Heber,” but as she waited, she began to second guess herself.

“I just kept listening for sirens from my house,” Carr said.

During that time, a Salt Lake City-area bomb squad assisted the police department in disposing of the bottle using a bomb squad robot.

Sever said “nothing explosive” was found in the bottle.

The Police Department’s investigations team is actively working to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident. 

Sever said bomb threats are “not super common” in Heber City and that there have been two others, at Wasatch High School and the Heber Valley Hospital, during his nearly three years as police chief.

Many witnesses are still grappling with the aftermath of the incident.

“It makes me sad if this was, one, a targeted event, and two, if it was a prank. It’s not funny,” Lyndee said. “Heber is growing, and it’s getting crazier, but I never thought that we’d have to be evacuated and have the bomb squad up here.”

Unlike Lyndee, this was not the first emergency situation Carr had been present for.

A gas leak on Main Street in 1994 forced the evacuation of “a few hundred” people to Central Elementary School (now the Heber City Public Safety building), where Carr was running an after school program with about 25 kids.

“That actually caused me to have a lot of questions because I started asking people, ‘If there was a big emergency, where would everyone evacuate? Where are the blankets?’ Because I had no idea how long people were going to end up staying at the school. I think they were able to clear it up by maybe 8 o’clock at night,” she said. “The early ’90s, compared to now, we are so much more prepared. … We have way more officers now that are on duty.”

Both Carr and Lyndee complimented library staff and police officers for handling the situation calmly.

“This could have been a lot more hectic and a lot more dangerous. I mean, there could have been stampedes,” Lyndee said. “The library staff did awesome, helping us evacuate, helping us get the information we needed as updates became available. The police did an outstanding job.”

Carr is well aware that the bomb threat has likely left many of the families who came for the summer kickoff party with lasting trauma. She encouraged talking to a trusted friend, family member, mental health counselor or religious leader.

Carr’s advice to anyone who finds themself in an emergency situation is to grab their keys, phone and kids and immediately move to a secure area, calling the authorities only when it is safe to do so.

As for after the incident?

“Take your kids for ice cream and distract them, and just tell them that the police are doing their job and that sometimes things happen, and you’re going to be protected because you’re with your parents and you’re with a trusted adult,” she said. “Or Kathy Carr will help you because she will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

The post ‘Wondering if we’re going to make it out’: Heber City residents recount bomb threat at Wasatch County Library appeared first on Park Record.

While the Founding Fathers began the United States Constitution with a preamble that established its foremost goal of forming a more perfect Union, Raul Balderas began a Constitution of his own with a more sardonic tone.

“We, the people, are pissed,” he joked, to the amusement of the dozen residents who had gathered in the Wasatch County Library last Wednesday. 

The group had come for the latest in a series of lectures about local history held this year in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

This lecture, given by former and current Wasatch High School history teachers Dawain M. Wheatley and Easton Powell, explored the founding principles of the United States and their relevance to Americans today.

In an attempt to hammer home the latter point, Wheatley and Powell asked attendees to gather in small groups and discuss how these documents could be applied to their daily lives.

The members of Balderas’ group were inspired by the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that the purpose of government is to secure the people’s unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The document says that it is the right of the people to “alter or abolish” any form of government that is destructive of these ends.

Wheatley provided a local example of this alteration of government to better serve the needs of the people in Wasatch County’s change from a three-member county commission to a seven-member county council in 2003. County commissioners could live anywhere in the county — even, hypothetically, all in the same neighborhood — while now, there are five regional and two at-large seats.

Balderas’ group had its own ideas about how to alter the government to better fit the needs of the people. Their thesis was that the federal government should spend more money on support for American citizens, especially in a time when inflation is rising. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last Wednesday that consumer prices had risen 4.2% since May last year, a 0.4% increase since last month’s assessment and the highest rate of inflation since 2023.

Balderas, a dual-immersion kindergarten teacher at Heber Valley Elementary, said inflation and Wasatch County’s cost of living are creating financial stress for him. 

Meanwhile, Romanie Murdock expressed her desire for the federal government to better support disabled people and caregivers. She has been her husband’s caregiver since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease four years ago.

“There’s little support for disabled people,” Murdock said. “And caregivers aren’t supported. Society expects that a loved one is the caregiver.”

Murdock said local organizations, particularly the county senior center and the Mountainland Association of Governments, which provides resources and education on aging, Alzheimer’s disease and caregiving in Wasatch, Summit and Utah counties, have been valuable resources for her. She isn’t sure exactly how the federal government can better support Americans who are disabled.

But whatever that support may look like, it could be beneficial for all Americans, suggested group member Ammon Teare. The phenomenon is called the curb cut effect, named for sidewalk ramps, which were installed for people in wheelchairs but are used by others, like people pushing strollers or shopping carts.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, which required nationwide accommodations like curb cuts, was signed into law only 36 years ago, thanks to the efforts of disability civil rights activists and government officials alike.

“It took a lot of people a lot of time to fight for those changes,” Teare said. 

Teare said such progress is often prompted by Americans reflecting on their country’s founding principles and questioning whether current policy is contradictory to those principles. 

He was particularly inspired by Wheatley and Powell’s discussion of how civil rights movements throughout American history have repeatedly led to the reversal of discriminatory government policies.

“Whether it be current immigration policy or the attitudes toward people in this country who are from different parts of the world, the way they’re perceived has changed over time, and at least some part of the impetus for that change was from people looking back at the Constitution, the Declaration (of Independence), and saying, ‘Well, when they say, “we, the people,” or they say, “all people,” they didn’t just mean a handful of people,’” he said.

Teare hopes that America’s 250th anniversary prompts all Americans to reflect on the country’s founding principles and become advocates for them, whether it be through grassroots efforts, voting, running for office or voicing opinions in a public forum.

“There’s never been a time in the country where talking about our rights, talking about the foundations of our democracy, hasn’t been valuable,” he said. “We should be looking (at) how we can use these to improve the rights and lives of all Americans.”

The post On eve of America 250, Wasatch County residents reflect on country’s founding principles appeared first on Park Record.

The Live Like Sam Foundation likened people to plants during a presentation at the Wasatch County Library.

“Does anyone have a sad house plant?” asked Programs Director Jessica Parker on Thursday.

A few people gathered in the meeting room — mostly adults — raised their hands. Parents, guardians and other trusted adults had come with their kids for “Bonding Better Together,” a new, free program by Live Like Sam providing activities for intergenerational bonding.

Parker and representatives from the library, Wasatch County Health Department, Wasatch Community Foundation and Wasatch Behavioral Health explained some of the vital components needed for a plant or person to thrive. 

The pot is the support system, providing structure and protection. The sapling sprouting from a little seed represents each person’s inner strength. Soil represents family, and water represents daily, healthy habits. Finally, just as external environments shape a plant, a person’s ability to weather a storm builds character. 

As the speakers explained this, each adult and child pair painted flower pots before filling them with soil and a plant to nurture.

Mother Valeria Cruz came to “Bonding Better Together” with her 15-year-old daughter, Valentina. Valeria is a gardener, and Valentina is currently taking a floriculture course at Wasatch High School.

“We love our plants and spending time out in the garden. It gives you hope in the spring, especially when the weather doesn’t make up its mind,” Valeria said. “It feels really good to be among our peers and neighbors and do something fun.”

Of the two, Valentina was the artist, painting a neon tiger on the side of her flower pot. Valeria, meanwhile, was a self-styled “imitator” who used a stencil to color flowers on the side of her own pot.

The mother and daughter typically bond through conversations on the way to school, whether they be about books, friends or TikTok videos. But the pair weren’t always so close. 

Valeria explained that she used to have more of a mother-knows-best mindset, which she’d inherited from her parents. As Valeria took parenting classes and read books, she realized the road to mutual respect was being receptive to her kids’ critiques.

“The fact that I’m older doesn’t necessarily make me wiser. Even though that’s been hard to admit, it’s also what our relationship needed,” she said. “When I want to improve on something, I rely on their feedback, and I encourage that. And it’s not always easy to hear it, but it’s what makes me connect better with them. And it’s totally worth it. I can leave my ego aside and be like, ‘OK, girl. Give it to me straight.’” 

Like her mother, Valentina also adopted that mindset.

“I felt like I was always right, even though half the time I was wrong. But it didn’t feel good hearing that,” she said. “I think it’s good to just sit down and get your criticism because all your parent really wants to do is help you.”

Valentina said she feels grateful to have the mother she does — it’s one of the healthiest relationships she has.

Valeria’s advice for other parents is simple: “All you have to do is keep them alive, teach them a few skills and then watch them become, because they’re already their own person. As long as you can respect that, I think things flow pretty (well).”

While Valeria acknowledged parenting can be tricky, it can also be fun.

“Moments like today make it all worth it,” she said. “We’re going to go home, and we’re going to have our little memory of what we did and the time we spent together. … She’ll take (the flower pot) to college. I’ll make her.”

“Bonding Better Together” will be held seasonally at Wasatch County Library and will eventually come to Park City Library, according to Parker. Activities will be listed at livelikesam.org/events.

The post Adults and kids grow together in new Live Like Sam program appeared first on Park Record.

Almost four years ago, then-20-year-old wildland firefighter Rebekah Epperson was fighting a blaze in Idaho for the Utah County Fire Department when she lost her footing on a dirt road and tumbled 20 feet down the side of a sheer cliff. She landed wrong on her right leg, but she thought it was fine.

“I was able to jump back up, and I was like, ‘I’m OK. I’m good.’ I had some little burns across my stomach, but it wasn’t as bad as it should have been, because I could have been dead,” she said.

But she started to feel pain in her leg as soon as her crew got back to camp. Her chief told her to go home and rest. The next morning, Epperson realized she needed to go to the hospital.

They did an MRI scan, and the doctor came in, and he’s just like, ‘Did you walk in here?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I walked in.’ And he’s like, ‘How?’” Epperson recalled with a laugh.

The scan found that Epperson had torn almost every single muscle in her right leg. 

But the reality of her injury hadn’t hit her yet. She thought that after her leg healed, she would come back, invincible, and the whole ordeal would just become a legend in her long and storied firefighting career. Little did she know that her injury would instead serve as the origin story for her career as a musician.

Several scans, doctor’s appointments and physical therapy sessions later, a physician broke the news to Epperson that she would never fully recover from her injury.

“He walked in, and I was like, ‘So, are you going to have to chop the leg off?’ And he gave me this look of, ‘Now’s not the time to joke, because this is serious.’ That was when I was like, ‘Oh, crap,’” Epperson said.

She had lost about 30% of the connecting muscle and tendons in her leg. She was using a full leg brace and crutches at the time and was told that, even as she recovered, she would walk with a limp for the rest of her life.

Firefighting had been Epperson’s dream for years. Through Utah Valley University, she’d earned an associate’s degree in emergency medical services and was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in fire science. She was hoping to become a fire captain. But her injury forced her to face the fact that her career was over.

“It almost felt like a death sentence, like someone had let go of a guillotine string,” Epperson said.

That night, after breaking the news to her family and the fire chief, she picked up her guitar and started strumming. 

At that moment, she began writing a song called “Change My Mind,” a somber folk tune about the hopelessness she felt. Almost four years later, Epperson still sings it to herself on bad days. 

Under the stage name Rebekah Blaine, Epperson released the single a few weeks ago.

It took some time for Epperson to become Blaine. Epperson had always been into songwriting, but never thought she would play her music for anyone other than herself and her family.

Epperson started playing guitar and songwriting in middle school. She grew up “dirt poor” in a trailer park in Heber City and got a smoking deal on her first guitar.

“I was sitting there playing one of the guitars in the shop, and the guy felt bad because he’s like, ‘Oh, you can’t afford a guitar. Well, we’ll give you this one on a discount,’” she said. “I still have the guitar. It is the worst-sounding thing I’ve ever played.”

Epperson’s first attempt at songwriting was “very much middle school poetry, and (she) didn’t know how to rhyme,” but she kept at it, albeit in private.

After her firefighting injury, Epperson moved back in with her parents in Heber City and spent most of her days sitting on the couch and watching “Scooby Doo.” 

Epperson, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also spent a lot of time praying, asking God what she was supposed to do now that she had lost everything.

“Every time I’d pray about it, I just kept getting the answer of, ‘Pursue music.’ And for me, I was like, ‘This is a stupid answer because what am I going to do with music?’” she laughed.

But she gave in, started playing more for family and friends and began recording music.

Epperson’s first recorded song, “The Story,” released last November, is a Christmas song about the birth of Christ sung in the country tones of Dave Stamey. 

“He was the son of a carpenter. He wasn’t anything big or special. … And I feel like I relate to that,” Epperson said. “When I wrote ‘The Story,’ I wrote the story of Christ, but I also felt like I was kind of writing my story as well.”

While faith informs Epperson’s songwriting, her music isn’t confined to one theme or genre. 

She’s currently recording her debut album. One song is inspired by Irish folk music with some bagpipes thrown in the mix. Another song’s lyrics focus on some of the “weird comments” she gets when she tells people about her injury.

“Since I’m so young, I get told all the time, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so resilient,’” she said. “They’re just like, ‘Well, be grateful it happened when you were young. … You have your whole life ahead of you.” And you’re like, ‘Yeah, but it was still hard.’”

Epperson hopes that, as Rebekah Blaine, she can “make things a little bit lighter for people who are going through hell, like (she) was.” She’s already gotten comments on her TikTok posts from fellow wildland firefighters who were forced to retire.

“Being able to talk with them and be like, ‘You’re not alone in this,’ has been such a blessing,” Epperson said. “It was a horrifying accident, and I’m going to be affected by it for the rest of my life. But in an odd kind of way, I’m grateful for it.”

Epperson will be performing under the moniker Rebekah Blaine at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday at the Wasatch County Library. She will also perform at the Thursday Market on Main events at Main Street Park beginning in June.

The post Former firefighter heals through music after life-shattering injury appeared first on Park Record.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation during a youth panel on Wednesday at the Wasatch County Library is that some modern teenagers are romanticizing the 1980s.

“What looks so appealing about that is the raw, authentic experiences that were had,” said 17-year-old Amiah Baker. “When you were bored as a child, you’d go out and play outside instead of building something on a screen. … I think boredom leads to creativity. And when you’re not given the opportunity to sit in stillness and think about what you desire, that creativity can’t happen, and you end up feeling a little bit unfulfilled.”

The importance of boredom was just one insight illuminated by panelists from Wasatch High School who discussed topics ranging from AI use to phone restrictions.

The panel was organized by the Live Like Sam Foundation, the Park City-based nonprofit named for Sam Jackenthal, who died in a skiing accident at 16. The organization, founded by his father and sister, teaches youth in Summit and Wasatch counties to live as Sam lived — with courage, joy, self-awareness, kindness and leadership — through preventative programming.

Wednesday’s panel was the second held in Wasatch County after one at Wasatch Alternative High School in January. The panels are part of a broader effort by the organization to establish relationships with Wasatch County youth.

“In Summit County, we are starting with kids in pre-K,” said Programs Director Jessica Parker. “Here, they’re not growing up with Live Like Sam. They maybe bump into us here, see us at a lunch table, but I don’t think we’re as familiar to them.”

Parker said youth panels provide an opportunity for teenagers to gain experience with public speaking while educating the community about their perspectives.

She said what has amazed her about the kids she has worked with is their openness about mental health.

“Kids are like, ‘Yeah, I go to therapy on Tuesdays,’ … whereas, my generation, therapy was if you had a problem,” she said.

Although Parker thought the stigma around discussing mental health had decreased since her generation, most of the panelists agreed that the taboo hadn’t completely dissipated.

“There is kind of an almost unspoken rule. It’s not really a ‘Don’t talk about it.’ It more (so) seems to make people uncomfortable,” said 16-year-old Aubry Schaff.

Even if the mental health struggles are not talked about, there are a variety of stressors impacting teens — for example, national and international news, now more accessible and unfiltered than ever in the digital age.

“I don’t know what news sources I can trust to tell me what’s actually happening in the world,” Schaff said. “And honestly, what I do know is true really stresses me out, and it scares me quite a bit. And I guess the impact it takes on my mental health is that there is pretty much nothing I can do right now, and it kind of makes me feel a little hopeless about our future.”

Kyra Harris, 18, added that academic pressures have been another source of mental health struggles.

“I’ve had many late nights, just super upset doing homework,” she said. “I’m forced to be in this specific box because of expectations put upon me from either my parents, my teachers or leaders of some sort. And not that that’s bad, … (but) it has harmful effects when you are a star, and they’re trying to put you in a circle shape.”

The panelists concurred that adults tend to underestimate what they’re capable of.

Take Jesus Zarco as an example. At 18 years old, the Wasatch High School senior has already launched a business called Clutter Busters. Like Marie Kondo of the Wasatch Back, Zarco offers all kinds of organization services, from garages to pantries (email clutterbustershelp@gmail.com to set an appointment).

While running the business has come with challenges like taxes and time management, it’s also given Zarco a better sense of independence.

“Anyone can do anything at any age if you just put your mind to it,” he said.

Though that sentiment rings true, Harris admitted that relying on AI for difficult tasks was tempting. She said she’s seen peers use AI to cheat on assignments, and said AI is sometimes “more creative than what I could come up with,” which has discouraged her.

“Technology, period, is a tool and a destroyer at the same time, depending on how you choose to use it,” she said.

While the panelists agreed that technology was the root of many of their woes, they could not come to a consensus about how to restrict its use, as exemplified by a discussion about a permanent phone ban in schools. 

That discussion turned out to be timely, as Senate Bill 96, which would restrict use of smart devices by students for the entire school day, passed in the Utah State House of Representatives the day after the panel. As of Thursday, the bill still needs to be signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox.

Schaff said such a ban would make her less focused at school.

“I have a lot of things happening with my life right now, and I’m constantly worried that I might miss something important that’s happened,” she said.

Meanwhile, Harris attended a public charter school in Colorado that had a no-phone policy for the first half of high school and benefited from the ban.

“It was super strict. However, I definitely feel like I was more creative at my other school. You were able to have genuine interaction with other students, and I think it was good for my mental health,” she said.

She said now that she has constant access to her phone, she’s had more chances for social interaction with friends, but it distracts her from learning.

Despite the stressors, the panelists agreed that there are many exciting aspects of being a teen in Wasatch County today, from increased opportunities for self-expression through social media to the wide array of opportunities to gain professional experience through Wasatch High School’s Career and Technical Education programs.

“It’s a fun era right now for teenagers,” Zarco said.

Live Like Sam’s next panel in Wasatch County will be focusing on raising resilient youth. The panel will feature youth, mental health professionals and educators. That panel will be on April 30, though the venue is yet to be determined.

The post Wasatch County teens detail stressors in Live Like Sam panel appeared first on Park Record.