Charlotte Olsen suddenly couldn’t speak. She couldn’t text. She could hear what her colleagues were saying, but for nearly an hour, she lost the ability to communicate at all.

For someone who had spent her career preparing for emergencies, she was wholly unprepared for the possibility of a stroke at just 40 years old.

"I trust Denver Health with my life. Literally."

For Garritte Hitchens, saying those powerful words are an affirmation of all she has been through and how far she's come, thanks to her lifelong health care partner, Denver Health.

Hitchens was born at Denver Health, and if not for exceptional trauma care over a few touch-and-go days, she would have died there, too.

Jon Frohlich has hiked hundreds of mountains in Colorado, including all 58 of the 14ers, over more than 20 years.

But his finish at the 2026 Colfax Half Marathon on May 16, which came six months after he nearly died of a heart attack, was the most emotionally rewarding trek of his life.

It will forever be a Christmas Colin Metz will never forget. In 2024, he was skiing with his dad at Winter Park Resort, a family holiday tradition, but this time something happened that changed his life.

"I was going up, and there's this little cliff that I always jump off of and I've been very comfortable with," Metz said. "I hit the jump and from what my dad said, I landed and then I overcorrected myself and I kind of went in a power slide and my ski got caught on another tree and then it was like a whiplash sort of thing. I went right into the other tree."

Ten months after a bullet tore through Ben Varga's neck at Washington Park, he stood before a crowd at Denver Health on his 24th birthday, celebrating life and calling for an end to gun violence.

"I'm incredibly lucky to be here today, standing, walking, talking and seemingly unaffected from the incidents that happened on that day," Varga said at a Dec. 10, 2025 candlelight vigil honoring victims of gun violence. "However, most people aren't as lucky. Think about the hundreds of people who lose their lives to gun violence every day."