From the Truckee Times, November 27th, 2007. On the web at www.truckeetimes.com

Sugar Bowl Academy Just One of Founder's Many Achievements

By Robert Frohlich, Truckee Times Correspondent

It's 9 on a Sunday morning and the top of windswept Mount Lincoln would be a quiet as the sleepy snowfields surrounding Donner Summit's nearby Lake Van Norden, if not for one thing: a force of nature named Patricia Hellman Gibbs.
Dropping off Lincoln's ridge into steep terrain, carving the vertical puzzle into a ballet, she is followed closely by a posse of laughing children that include four of her own. The group turns shape and stance, turning crisp arcs, before rolling out of sight over the headwall of a slope called Carl's Nose.
Patricia "Tricia" Hellman Gibbs is much more than just you typical ski mom racing the kids down the mountain. She might just be the single most enlightened person to ever strap on a pair of skis. The Marin resident and former World Cup alpine racer is founder and director of one of the country's most notable medical clinics in San Francisco. She's also the founder and driving energy behind the Sugar Bowl Academy. A combination of modern-day Mother Teresa, alpha girl and educator, her life mission has been deep dyed by mountain life.
"Tricia embraces life with boundless energy. I'm not suprised at all by her accomplishments," says John McMurtry, Tricia's former race coach on the United States Ski Team in the late 1970s. "She was an absolute fierce competitor with a lot of determination who got the most out of her ability.
"During her years of international competition she helped us become the best women's ski team in the world."

A view of the Sugar Bowl Academy campus in the fall

A Homecoming
Sugar Bowlwas the first place she ever skied and today it remains a passionate place in her heart. Its slopes are where she remembers playing on little red plastic strap-on skis at age two. Her grandparents, Mick and Ruth Hellman, owned a chalet at the resort and Tricia's family used to come out from the East Coast for the winter holiday's every year. Today, that renovated chalet serves as a second home for her family.
"My grandparents loved to ski," Gibbs recalls. "I remember us taking a picnic to the top of Mount Lincoln. We skied down what was then called "Mogul Ridge" (now Lakeview) and sat in the shade of trees overlooking Donner Lake.
"The sun would be warm and we could strip down to our T-shirts. That's when I truly realized, at the age of around 8, how beautiful and serene the mountain was and how wonderful the sport of skiing is if it could bring you to a place where everything in the universe feels right."
Daughter of renowned financier and San Francisco icon Warren Hellman, the primary stockholder of Sugar Bowl (her aunt, Nancy Bechtle is president of the ski resort), the hyperactive and athletic mother of five children, ages 15, 18, 20 and twins age 13, dosen't just lend her name to causes: she rolls up her sleeves and gets down to the hard work-- mostly because she never hesitates to try.
Consider the San Francisco Free Clinic
"My husband, Richard, and I had been in private practice for three years when we decided to start our free clinic," says Gibbs, whose spouse is also the medical supervisor for the San Francisco Ballet. "We were consumed with the 'business' of medicine, and having increasingly guilty and nagging thoughts about the uninsured patients who came through our clinic. they had to pay full price for services, many times with a dismayingly high price tag. We had a dramatic thought: how about taking our office, move to a less expensive part of town, and see uninsured patients for free?"
Friends and parents thought the medical couple hair-brained, but on Valentine's Day of 1994, they opened the doors of the San Francisco Free Clinic for the first time. Their mission was and is very simple: to provide free medical care to the uninsured and to train and encourage other physicians and medical providers to do the same type of work. Tricia Gibbs, a Yale medical school graduate, was the first doctor "on-duty" for the clinic.
"It was the best day of work I had in my entire life," she says.
Since then, the San Franciso Free Clinic, located in the Richmond district, has seen over 50,000 patients, 90 percent of whom are below the federal poverty level. Emphasizing preventitve medicine and care of chronic disease, the things that uninsured patients have the greatest problem accessing, the non-profit clinic has become well-equiped through major donations and fund-raising to care for every type of primary care problem that walks through the door
The couple's hard work and innovations did not go unnoticed . In 1998, the Gibbses were selected Family Physicians of the Year by the California Academy of Family Physicians.
"The clinic provides a high level of care to people who otherwise would receive very little," explains Dr. Robert Steinberg, former chairman of family practice at Cal Pacific Medical Center. "As opposed to the other free clinics where patients get a limited amount of time, this clinic is a special place that makes a strong commitment to treating patients as people, a reflection of Tricia's values about medicine."

Tricia Gibbs presenting the Williams Book Award at the 2007 SBA graduation

Education and Athletics
These days Gibbs, who in 2002 earned a prestigious certification from the American Board of Family Practice by placing in the 99th percentile, promotes the Sugar Bowl Academy, a preparatory school she co-founded in 1999 with Jim Hudson and Barbara Sorba. The school combines high academic standads with an upper-tier racing program.
"We've modeled our school after the Stratton Mountain Academy in Vermont, which my father founded," says Gibbs, who has chaired both the Sugar Bowl Ski Team Foundation and Academy. "Sugar Bowl creates a very special environment to educate young people. This college preparatory school places equal importance on academics and athletics. In all our programs, we emphasize development of mind, body, and spirit."
Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the school's staff, the Sugar Bowl Academy recently attained a full 6-year accreditation from the Wester Association of Schools and Colleges. Two years ago, SBA alumni Katie Hitchcock was selected to the United States Women's Alpine Ski Team.
"So much of our success surrounds Tricia's involvement," says Bill Hudson, a former Olympian and the Academy's executive director. "She's the most hardworking and motivated person I've ever met. I receive an email from her at 1a.m. and then discover another that was sent at 5 a.m. It makes you wonder if she ever sleeps."
A winner of both the Mount Tam Hill Climb and Masters Quadruple Dipsea in 1999, she admits that going on a long trail run in the Headlands near her house in Mill Valley, or, more importantly, skiing with her kids and family, are her favorite forms of play. Nevertheless, a commitment to helping others remains a driving motivation in her life.
"After having five kids, founding a free clinic and then a ski academy, my major challenge has been finding some kind of balance," says Gibbs. "The time demands of these things are incredible. So the main issue for me at the moment is that there is simply TOO MUCH good stuff going on. Ultimately, my goal is to make sure (my kids, the free clinic, the ski academy) are self-sufficient, happy, increase the good in the world and live after me."