Lindsey Baron was kind and generous, caring and loving, funny and smart, beautiful, athletic, and a future businesswoman with big dreams.

During the summer of 1996, 16-year-old Lindsey had just completed her college essay and was looking forward to her senior year of high school. She felt lucky to have both older sisters home from college and to be spending the summer with them. One late June evening, the three girls decided to go for an early evening stroll in their quiet neighborhood. The sun was still shining.

Only two sisters came home. A boy, who had recently graduated from Lindsey’s high school and was known to the family, hit two of the girls with his car. Lindsey suffered severe brain trauma and never woke up. She died on July 2, 1996.

“As Lindsey was dying at the Albany Medical Center, our family was approached regarding the possibility of donating her organs,” said her mother, Susan. “We never hesitated to say ‘yes’ because we knew Lindsey would want to help someone live or help improve the quality of someone’s life if she had that power. The possibility of donating Lindsey’s organs was the only ray of light during a very bleak and horrifying period in our lives.”

Lindsey was the first female junior snowboarding instructor at Okemo Mountain in Ludlow, VT. Her dream, she wrote in her college essay that was never used, was to study business in college, open a snowboarding store in her beloved Vermont and sell clothing for snowboarders with her Bubba logo on them. Bubba is a cartoon character created by Lindsey while she was still in elementary school. In her college essay, she said that she knew there were lots of other snowboarding stores and to “look out because Bubba Inc. is about take over!”

Since Lindsey was not able to fulfill her dream, her family started Bubba Inc. They have created and sold stickers, shirts, hats and jewelry bearing the Bubba logo. All profits finance the Lindsey Baron Bubba Foundation, which raises money for scholarships and programs that promote acts of kindness, and reward and encourage the values which Lindsey embraced: friendliness, inclusiveness, unselfishness, citizenship and empathy. Each year at the Albany Medical College award ceremony, a prize is given to a graduating medical student who treats his or her patients with acts of kindness emulating the behavior promoted by the Foundation.

“The thought that Lindsey’s heart continues to beat gives us some peace,” said Susan. “Because we continue to talk about her and remember the joy she added to the world, Lindsey will live on in our hearts forever.”