Colin Heffern | Craig Hospital PUSH Dinner Highlight Video

Colin Heffern is an advocate, traveler, educator, and wannabe occupational therapist. A native of Cheyenne, Wyoming, Colin sustained a C4 spinal cord injury bellyflopping from a tree branch into a pile of leaves during his freshman year at Colorado State University in 2004. Colin completed rehab at Craig Hospital and returned to CSU, earning his BS in Landscape Architecture in 2010. He then pursued Master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Southern California, graduating in 2013.
Following his adventurous spirit and love of nature, Colin began working for the National Park Service in 2014. As a Project Manager, he guides planning projects, some of them supporting accessibility initiatives to improve visitor spaces and programs at parks. He frequently travels for work and pleasure, routinely defies stereotypes placed on individuals with high injuries, and often laughs.
Since 2016, Colin has led a biweekly class focused on independent lifestyles for patients with high spinal cord injuries. He also volunteers as a mentor with Craig's peer program.
Colin Received the Dave and Gail Liniger Spirit of Craig award at the 2020 PUSH Gala. The award recognizes an individual or family who brings to life the spirit of Craig Hospital through significant direct hospital involvement, philanthropic support, advocacy and volunteer efforts on Craig’s behalf, service to patients, or leadership at the hospital or foundation.
Honorees embody Craig’s guiding principles of bravery, excellence, compassion, reliability, authenticity, innovation, and generosity.
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Craig Hospital in Denver, Colorado, is a world-renowned rehabilitation hospital that specializes exclusively in the neurorehabilitation and research of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) and brain injury (BI). Craig is a not-for-profit, free-standing, national center of excellence that has treated more than 34,500 patients with SCI and BI since 1956. craighospital.org