Park City’s Live Like Sam Foundation

Sam Jackenthal, inverted. Photo: Live Like Sam

PARK CITY, Utah. — Sam Jackenthal is a name many Parkites know or have at least heard. He’s the Sam of the Live Like Sam Foundation. This non-profit offers scholarships and programming to Park City’s youth that revolve around character building with a strong focus on volunteering and supporting low-income and high-needs local youth.

Sam was known for his impressive athletics. In 2015, he won the men’s under-18 overall US National Freestyle Championship at just 15-years-old. Three months after that huge win, Jackenthal threw a familiar trick at an offseason training camp in Australia that inflicted a head injury. Three weeks later, he passed.

However, it wasn’t just his athletic prowess that brought over 1,300 people to his celebration of life memorial at the Utah Olympic Park.

“What we saw is that Sam stood for… kindness, positivity, joy, leadership, courage, compassion, and self-awareness,” said Ron Jackenthal, Sam’s father and co-founder of the Live Like Sam Foundation. “Those were the kind of characteristics that so many of us continue to tell stories about Sam, whether it be a teacher, adults, other students, older or younger. Stories about Sam often include athletics, but they almost always go beyond the podium. What made him so unique is that he had this athletic talent, but he showed up as this old soul and this caring human and made himself available to try to make the world a better place.”

Even after a few years following Sam’s passing, the community continued to honor his legacy and keep him alive in memory. This continued support for Sam led Jackenthal to leave his career in the tech world and start the foundation with his 20-year-old daughter Skylar to continue Sam’s influence on the community.

“There’s been so much continuous energy, love, and support around Sam that it was really hard to ignore. It kept having me curious, and even my daughter… There’s something here, there’s something that makes this community and other like adjacent communities hold onto him and look up to him, and still hold him high.”

October 9 marks the foundation’s second Live Like Sam Day Celebration at Utah Olympic Park. This fundraising event aids the organization in financially supporting scholarships and programming for young Parkites that focus on creating a positive and healthy sense of self-identity, purpose, character, connection to community, and giving back.

The event features a gourmet dinner, craft cocktails, live and silent auctions with over $150,000 in auction items including vacations, dining experiences, and more, a show from the Flying Ace Allstars, and opportunities to support Park City’s growing generations.

The Live Like Sam Foundation is proud to be launching four new unique scholarship types to young Parkites with the help of fundraising. The first is the Pursue Your Passion scholarships, which applicants will apply for funding to help support them around their passions, whether that is sports-related or not. The Community Give-Back Service grants, Skylar’s brainchild, encourages applicants to submit an age-appropriate business plan to fund a community service project. It will also be launching a fourth scholarship encouraging youth to be creative and develop their own bucket lists of things they hope to accomplish over the next year and beyond, inspired by Sam’s personal bucket list.

The foundation has implemented the final scholarship for a few years already, the Live Like Sam Character Awards. The purpose of these awards is to encourage kids to Live Like Sam with joy, kindness, courage, leadership, and self-awareness. What is unique about the character awards is that they will be peer-nominated.

In the next 30 days, the LLS organization will announce details around new programming surrounding skills-based life coaching for our local youth. LLS has and continues to work with educators, coaches, and mentors to create impactful curriculums in the past year.

October 10 is the third annual Live Like Sam Day, celebrating kindness and community. Many local businesses, including Vessel Kitchen and Red Rock Brewery support Live Like Sam Day and donate a portion of the day’s earnings to the foundation.

“We get to be there to inspire other people…We get to choose love over loss, we get to choose life over loss, and that’s our choice,” said Jackenthal. “I truly believe that my daughter and I are in business and partnership with her brother; Sam still positively impacts people every day.”

You can also support The Live Like Sam Foundation by Attending their event (buy tickets here) or by donating to the foundation here.