It was January 2021 when the employees of The Mortgage Company at 518 Main St. were asked by the company’s owner, Dave Landon, to choose a nonprofit and volunteer for the next year.
The program was called Investmint and was the first of its kind implemented at The Mortgage Company. A plethora of nonprofits came to the employees’ attention and each nonprofit received $1,000 from the start. For Debbie Betts, the choice was a no-brainer: The Mayfly Project.
The Mayfly Project, named after the famous insect that populates Colorado’s riverways and lakes, is an organization that offers fly-fishing guiding and teaching to children in foster care. The organization’s mission is to “support children in foster care through fly fishing and introduce them to their local water ecosystems, with a hope that connecting them to a rewarding hobby will provide an opportunity for foster children to have fun, build confidence, and develop a meaningful connection with the outdoors,” according to the official website.
As the year progressed, the employees worked diligently with their chosen nonprofits, donating their time, energy and passion to their respective causes. As 2021 came to a close, employees were asked to submit a formal write-up of their experience with the organization, including what they learned from the experience and the vitality of the nonprofit.
Eight finalists were then chosen by a panel of third-party, non-biased judges and a winner was announced in December. Betts, 50, a lifetime sportswoman and outdoors-enthusiast, won the contest with her volunteer work at the local sector of The Mayfly Project. In addition to bragging rights, Betts also won $10,000 to be donated to the nonprofit.
Betts, a fifth-generation resident of Cañon City, has been a lover of nature since girlhood and grew up on the trickling streams and rippling lakes of Colorado alongside her father — another nature enthusiast. She began her lifelong love of being a fly-fishing guide at the tender age of 21 and has been guiding part-time ever since. She currently guides for Royal Gorge Anglers. It is also worth mentioning that she takes regular fishing trips with her 13-year-old son, who also adores the sport of fly-fishing.
Fellow fly-fishing guide and friend Joe Law has nothing but praise for Betts’s expertise in the field.
“She’s not a token female guide,” he said. “I think sometimes people say they hired a girl to be a guide and ‘this isn’t going to be a great experience’ and they get out on the river with her and they realize that she’s the real deal and she’s been doing this since she was a kid and she’s a true pro as much as any of us.”
Betts has moved across the state but whether she was in Salida or Buena Vista or somewhere else, you can bet she had a fly-fishing pole in her hand.
When asked why she chose The Mayfly Project, Betts relayed her past experience with the foster system. She had previously been on the board of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) but didn’t feel that she was serving her purpose. Enter: The Mayfly Project.
Five times a year, Betts and the other volunteer mentors would take five foster kids from groups homes in Pueblo on fly-fishing trips throughout the state. Once there, the kids would learn to tie knots, thread the flies, and learn about the delicate water ecosystem throughout Colorado.
“It’s a huge stress relief for me,” she said. “It’s like the only thing that can calm me down so when you think about these foster kids, just having them have an outlet like this is huge. It’s amazing what it can do for these kids.”
The local sector of The Mayfly Project is relatively new, and Betts is hopeful that the $10,000 that she won for the organization can be implemented to expand to more kids in the coming years. In 2021, the project was able to serve five kids from Pueblo, but Betts hopes that 2022 will bring more kids from Pueblo but also from the local Fremont County area.
The money will surely help the monetary expense of sponsoring each child — which amounts to nearly $800 a child as each is supplied with a set of his/her own personal gear, the crown jewel being a new fly rod, at the end of each year.
“It can be life-changing for them,” Betts said. “Just to know that they have these outdoor spaces that they go can go — a lot of these kids don’t know. All the anxiety and stress that it (foster care) must give them, just knowing that they have a place to go and be outdoors and, just quiet space is really impactful for them. It just gives them something, for some of them it gives them a whole purpose.”
Betts plans to be a mentor for the organization again in 2022 and hopes that more kids will have to opportunity to love Colorado’s nature panorama as much as she does.
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