Business Innovators Radio - The Inspired Impact Podcast with Judy Carlson-Interview with Laura Crowley, Executive Director, Angel Eyes

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Laura lost her third child, Terrah, to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in 1994 and Angel Eyes (formerly called The Colorado SIDS Program) reached out immediately. Laura has hosted lobster dinners for over 200 guests, founded the Angel Walk (formally the Walk to Remember). In 2014, she joined the Board of Directors and moved up to the President of the Board. In May 2024, Laura transitioned to Angel Eyes as the full-time Executive Director and has been fostering relationships within the Colorado community.“Now that my children are grown, they too support Angel Eyes by volunteering and chairing events. It is our family’s way of honoring Terrah.”https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/angeleyes/welcome*************************************************************Judy Carlson is the CEO and Founder of the Judy Carlson Financial Group, where she helps couples create personalized, coordinated financial plans that support the life they want to live – now and in the future.As an Independent Fiduciary and Comprehensive Financial Planner, Judy specializes in retirement income and wealth decumulation strategies. She is a CPA, Investment Advisor Representative, licensed in life and health insurance, and certified in long-term care planning.Judy’s mission is to help guide clients with clarity and care, building financial plans that focus on real planning built around real lives.Learn More: https://judycarlson.com/Investment Adviser Representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management, LLC, a SEC Registered Adviser.The Inspired Impact Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast-with-judy-carlson-interview-with-laura-crowley-executive-director-angel-eyes

Welcome to the Inspired Impact Podcast, where dedicated female professionals share how they inspire impact every day. Authentic stories, passionate commitment, lives transformed. I'm your host, Judy Carlson. Welcome to today's episode of the Inspired Impact Podcast. My guest today suffered a tragic loss when she lost her third child, Tara, to sudden infant death syndrome in 1994. At that time, the Colorado SIDS program reached out immediately, and now 30 years later, she is the full-time executive director of Angel Eyes. I would really like to welcome Laura Crowley to our podcast today. Hi, Judy. Thank you so much for having me.

As Judy said, my name is Laura. Yep, go ahead, Laura. Sorry. I am the full-time executive director of Angel Eyes. Angel Eyes used to be known as the Colorado SIDS program and only dealt with SIDS deaths until the mid-1990s. When SIDS deaths started declining, the board at the time decided to, expand our services to any child under the age of five that has suddenly passed away whether an infant or also pregnancy loss. We're here to help support our families in the Colorado community with providing free

professional grief counseling services to them. We also provide sibling counseling from the age of five up to the age of also free of charge. Recently, we brought on a Spanish-speaking counselor that now can also help with our Spanish-speaking community. This was a large piece of our puzzle that we were missing. As Judy said, in 1994, we lost our third child, Tara, to sudden infant death syndrome. And if you've ever lost a child, you know that this absolutely shakes up your world. You don't know what your new normal is, and you don't even know how to navigate the system. Within hours of us returning from the hospital, the Colorado SIDS program had reached out to us,

and that's where our journey becoming involved with now Angel Eyes began. We first got together with a couple of other parents in the Littleton area that also lost their child, their children to SIDS. And we teamed up together and we started hosting our lobster party, which benefited the Clause for a cause event that is the longest running fundraising event with Angel Eyes. We started with 200 to 250 tickets, and that's where my fundraising and honoring our children began. Since then, we also started the Angel Memorial Walk, and I have been either a volunteer, a committee chair, I was on the board of directors, and then I was president of the board of directors for seven years. About 18 months ago, the board had asked me to come over as the executive director, and I followed my passion, giving up my original career after 26 years to have

help other families and to continue to memorialize our daughter, Tara. Now my other two children are old enough. They also participate in the events as volunteers. And my grandsons also are now attending the Angel Memorial Walk as well. A small nonprofit in Colorado has had its struggles. And we are continuing with our fundraising. hopefully that we'll get out to other people and our events will grow. Our next event that's coming up is on Saturday, March 7th. It's our Suds for SIDS beer event, and it's going to be held at Wings Over the Rockies. Last year, we had 23 of our local breweries participate, five different restaurants,

and it also includes touring the wings over the Rockies. This truly is the best kept secret in town because one ticket price includes everything, including the food. It's a fun event that has grown over the years, and we encourage everybody to attend. Tickets are now available at angelize.org under the Colorado Chavez. and I hope to see everybody there with that one. The other events that we have is like I mentioned earlier, my first big event with Angel Eyes was Clause for a Cause. We order live lobsters in and they are delivered the morning of our distribution dates. All this is a pre-order event. And those two dates that are coming up are Saturday, March 16th and Saturday, June the 20th.

We have many people that have large lobster parties. You don't have to be as large as we were, 200 to 250 attendees at our party. But you can ask family and neighbors to come together and have a smaller one. That also is beneficial. Our memorial walk is in September in 26. And this is when all of our families, either recent or from many years, past can come together to honor their child. Last year, we had a dove release, which was very moving. Each family has a representative that comes up and announces their baby's name,

and there's a moment of silence so that we can all reflect on that child and memorialize them that day. Then there's a walk around Clement Park, and they come back and we have child activities, we have a barbecue, and families can meet each other and support each other at this event. Our final event, which was new in 2025, is our casino night. Again, this is another event where we ask the community to come together to support our nonprofit and to be able to continue our mission. So where does the money go for? these fundraising events. As I earlier had said, our families receive free professional grief counseling. Each mother and or father receives 12 free sessions, individual sessions, and then they

can come together as a couple and receive six more. We also provide grief counseling for siblings that are in the family, five years and older. They also receive 12 sessions. We have a great child therapy room, and our counselors are great with working with our younger clients. We also have a monthly support group meaning that all families can come together, well, adults can come together and share their stories and become friends and support partners with one another. It takes a village to put on our events. So we're always looking for volunteers. If you'd like to volunteer with Angelize at one of our events, again, you can go to our website at angelize.org under the Colorado chapter. Or you can give us a call at 303-970-2277. We're

also looking for sponsors for our events. At both our beer fest and our casino night, we sell VIP tables that you can purchase as well as individual tickets. And so we're really reaching out to the community to come together. With all nonprofits, I feel that with the way the government and everything is going, there's very little federal grants anymore, and the state grants that are out there, everybody is going after them. And so a small nonprofit like Angelize that does big things is really struggling financially to continue our support group. The other thing that we have is we're getting into the different hospitals along the front range with our teddy bear totes. This is a canvas, angelized bag that has a 12-inch soft teddy bear that has an angelized teddy bear t-shirt.

And these are given to families that have lost a child while they were in the hospital due to complications of the delivery itself or maybe a demise out of the NICU. These teddy bears are given to the family so that the mom has something to carry when they're leaving the hospital. We feel that no mom should leave the hospital without something to hold on to. We also have our child comfort packs. So this is a smaller teddy bear just like moms, along with a coloring book and a fidget gadget. So the older siblings in the family feel that they are also, oh gosh, what word am I? They are. They are. are also being remembered during this time. So these comfort packs are to give the children some

comfort while the parents are trying to figure out what to do next, what their new normal is. We also have what we call our family bonding packages. These packages are given to families so that they can go out and they can let the other siblings know that they're still very important and that they are still a family unit. Right now we have tickets to the Forney Transportation Museum and the Denver Zoo. So our counselors will reach out to me and let us know what families may be needing these packages. So we do what we can for our families and bring them together into our community. This is a community that none of us want to belong to. None of us chose to belong to it. None of us signed up to belong to it. But unfortunately, it is a need,

and we are here for our families. So how did the Colorado SIDS group know you had lost a child back in 1994, Laura? So in 1994 and prior, there was no HIPAA laws. So the hospital actually reached directly out to the Colorado SIDS program, gave them our phone number, our address, our names, probably Tara's name in the situation, and they were able to call us directly. Now because of HIPAA laws, we can't reach out to the families. We're needing the families to reach out to us. So in that tote bag is also our brochure explaining that what we do. So when the family goes home and they are understanding, what happened, they can take the brochure out and reach out to us at that time. We also have

information in OBGYN offices and pediatricians and in some of our emergency room hospitals as well because demise also happens in the emergency rooms. So we've been actively trying to get our name out there, our brochures out there to the different families. So if anybody is listening to this podcast today, I would love for them to reach out to us directly so that we can team with them and get the information into the hands of people that may need it. So they can reach me at Laura at angelize.org. Or they can also give us a phone call at the 303. 970-2277 number. You mentioned counselors,

so how do you find your grief counselors for your families? Well, we've been very lucky. We have four amazing counselors right now. One I spoke about earlier. She does only our Spanish-speaking counselors. And then we have three others. that meets the families more up in the northern area. We have one kind of centralized and down south in the Castle Rock Parker area.

And so we meet the families basically where they're at. We do have a brand new office off of I-25 and Colorado Boulevard, which in January will be starting to have our group meetings at that facility, and our counselors will be starting to see our clients in our angel eyes office. Okay. What was I going to ask you? So being that you've experienced the loss of a child, how has that brought you more clarity

to be the executive director of such a tough organization for families? Well, I didn't have any education in this field. I actually am an accountant by trade and was with the same company for 26 years, but I have the passion of having lost Tara to SIDS and truly know what the parents are going through. We have had families that have come back to us after 20 years. They never dealt with it. so we will counsel them because we know that grief has no boundaries. No grief has no end time.

It's a continuous thing that you, I don't want to say learn to deal with because I don't know if you ever really can learn how to deal with it. I guess maybe you just cope with it. But we're here for families during any of their grief process. we also do grandparent counseling too as well because the grandparents have a double whammy. They're grieving the loss of their grandchild plus they're also trying to figure out how to help their child that has just lost a child. I think my passion with Angel Eyes is just to continue to honor my daughter

and to help the families figure out their journey. and what their new normal is. When you think back to that time when you left the hospital after your daughter had passed away, your family had to come to a new normal and you had two children at home. How did you, do you remember back how you transitioned to the new normal and how that went for you? I do. I remember almost like it was yesterday. It's still very vivid after 30-plus years of it happening.

We just came together as a family. I was not working at the time. And so I spent a lot of time with my older two, became room mom and involved with their field trips and stuff like that. I did have a hard time like getting out of bed and figuring out a purpose for the day. but having two older children forced me to do that. I remember getting the Clause for a Cause, Lopter, Mailer form in the mail. By then I had met three other families in the Littleton area whose children also passed away of SIDS. And I reached out to them and I said, what if we all came together and we put on a large lobster party in the honor of our kids?

And that's where all that came together. And it's amazing because I am still very close friends with those families that we all came together to support our children back then. I would never have met these families had this not happen. So I guess if you're trying to look for a bright side, that would probably be my bright side, these families that I'd. met. Yeah, that whole shared experience in life is something pretty powerful, isn't it, Laura? Yeah. Yeah. And I think about their kids every time I go up to Littleton Cemetery because our kids are all buried fairly close to each other up at Littleton. Do they have like an infant burial area in the Littleton?

there? They do. It's called Babyland. And I'm up there several times a year. And every time I'm up there, I walk all the new sites, burial sites, and say a prayer for each of those families. Wow. What a blessing you are to those families. And it's just through your prayers that it's happening. Bless you. That's great. Oh, thank you. Wow, we've learned an awful lot about angelized. Thank you for sharing all of the different things that you do. And with the grants dwindling, these fundraisers are becoming even more important than ever. And so it's great that you got them organized and ready to go and planned out

and looking for volunteers and help for those events. Again, if anybody's interested in anything we've discussed today on this podcast, I would love for them to reach out to me, either again through the phone number or Laura at angelize.org. I love to network with other foundations that we've become involved with. and I'd love to talk to people. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I really appreciate your time today. Is there anything else you want to share before we close out our podcast today? Because I would just say that if you're a family that has lost a child under the age of five, we're here for you, whether it was five years ago, five weeks ago, whatever. Again, there's no time limit on your grief journey, and we'd love to help you out if you need anything from us. Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you so much for your kind and caring and big heart. You're changing lives and helping so many people through your organization, Laura. Thanks for taking the helm and charging forward. Well, thank you so much for having me on.

You're welcome. Thanks so much for joining us for the Inspired Impact Podcast. To listen to past episodes, please visit theinspiredimpactpodcast.com.