The annual Eastern South Dakota Heart Walk took place Saturday at Falls Park in Sioux Falls. / Emily Spartz / Argus Leader
Closing in on the final quarter-mile into Falls Park on Saturday, Minnehaha County Commissioner Dick Kelly and Jan Larsen were the perfect portrait of a pair of guys out exercising their dogs and themselves on a drizzly August morning.
In keeping with the annual Eastern South Dakota Heart Walk, though, there was more to the picture. Both Kelly and Larsen are heart transplant recipients, Kelly in 2011 and Larsen on May 11.
The opportunity to walk three miles, even in the rain, is not something taken for granted by either of them.
“Beautiful day for it. Good location,” Larsen said, and he meant it.
“We went through LVAD together,” Kelly said. “There’s a little community of us here,” and the memories of being kept alive by a left ventricular assist device wringing the last few beats from a failing heart until an organ donor could be found were in stark contrast to their soggy ramble Saturday.
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