The Chilikoot Cafe, locally owned by Lee Stylos, had a gathering for Olympian Skier, Jessie Diggins. Jessie’s 4X5 relay was held on Feb. 15 at 4 a.m. Stylos had planned for everyone to come and watch her race that morning and give the customers free coffee and pastries. It was not meant to be a fundraiser by any means, but during the race it started turning into one.

This was not the first fundraiser Stylos had done for Diggins. Right after she became pro in 2011, Diggins was skiing for United States Ski Team, which would cost up to $15,000 for the year. Diggins needed more support other than her family so she turned to locally owned businesses. Diggins decided to stop at Chilkoot Cafe first. Stylos was more than happy to help. That following November, Stylos hosted a $100 per plate fundraiser and with a restaurant packed, he raised over $10,000.

“Three years ago, there are a lot of nordic lot of them ride with the shop. She came in with her little bucket with a picture on it. I got 17 tables down there and out one on every table, table tins. She started talking about what she did in high school; how she made it to the B team for the Olympic team in Europe. The B team did not get as much funding as the A team. We will put some things out on the tables and see what we get. Jessie told me that she needed to raise about $20,000-25,000. She had already raised about $15,000 that past summer with sponsors.”

Lee continued “I have 50 seats, we all just charge everyone 100 bucks a seat. It will be about 50 people and 5,000 and then you are done. Kris Hanson had done a great job of getting the word out. She fundraised well over what her and I expected. We have done it every year since then,”said Lee Stylos.

After that night, Jessie left with over $10,000. It was not so much a fundraiser for her but more of a celebration and a going away party before she went to Europe.

“The Chilkoot Cafe hosts a wonderful dinner for Jessie. It was $100 per person and all the money goes directly to Jessie.  It’s great food, a great crowd of friends and then Jessie talks a bit – shares stories about her training and racing. The point of the fund raiser was to help Jessie out financially, but more importantly, to remind her of the big group of supporters she has cheering her on here in Stillwater,” said Kris Hansen, head coach of Nordic ski team.

Stylos was only expecting around 200 people to show up, they got a little more then what they were expecting. By the end of the race, there was about 400 that had come to watch Jessie race at 4. a.m. With people packed tightly in between the two rooms in the Chilkoot, people still had a great time and enjoyed watching every team race.

“The atmosphere of the 4 a.m  viewing was just amazing. People were pulling into the cafe long before the sun was rising, lots wearing Jessie shirts and all prepared to cheer. It was just so neat because on a day to day basis, people don’t really know much or talk much about skiing, but suddenly you were surrounded by some hundreds of people supporting the ski community, and to me that was really cool. Even though the US didn’t do as well as we wished, it still brought everyone in the room so much pride to see Jessie and the other women skiing as hard as they possibly could for our country,” said sophomore Ellie Hill.

She added, “We saw all of them cross the finish line and collapse, I mean, they obviously gave it their all and that is what we were cheering for. And in the end, when Sweden, Finland and Germany were competing for top podium with Norway out of sight, it was so cool to see everyone rapidly change their support and holler for Sweden, moving from 3rd to 1st. It was just so exciting. It wasn’t about winning anymore, it wasn’t about who skied fast and who skied slow, it was all about us getting together and supporting what all of the skiers who had worked so hard to get where they are now,” said Hill.

Jessie Diggings is looking forward to participating in the next Winter Olympics in Rio 2018. Stylos will be looking forwards to having another gathering when it gets closer to 2018.