Sitting in his bedroom in his family’s Sun Valley, Idaho, home, Jesse Keefe proudly grabs his first prosthetic leg from a shelf.
Keefe holds up the tiny gray prosthetic — covered in red, yellow and green smiley faces. It’s only a few inches taller than the hand he’s holding it with.
Keefe was born without an ankle bone, and doctors amputated his leg right below the knee when he was a baby. Now 21, Keefe said he’s never dwelt on it.
“I never knew any different,” he said, adding that he “was able to do everything” that other kids could do. “I never pursued knowing (why).”
On Tuesday, U.S. Para Alpine Ski and Snowboard announced Keefe had qualified for the 2026 Milan Cortina Paralympics, his second Paralympic Games.
“For me, it’s freeing,” Keefe said of skiing. “I’m able to do this super challenging thing and go really fast without anyone telling me ‘no.’”
Finding community
Born into a skiing family and living in a ski town, Keefe learned to ski at 2 years old.
“If you’re a kid in Sun Valley, you kind of go skiing,” he said. “That’s kind of how it goes.”
He joined the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation, where he became a “lifer” in its programs, meaning he “was a member of SVSEF every year I possibly could have been up until graduation,” he said.
His family was supportive of his skiing, but he did experience bullying.
“Kids are mean,” he said. “I was literally the only kid with a physical disability in my entire county. Like, with how small the ski town is, there was no one else. So I was the only one, and I was well known for it, too.”
He found a sense of community and belonging when he began attending Shriners Children’s Salt Lake City’s Un-Limb-ited Camps, which are designed for kids from across the country with limb differences, according to Shriners Salt Lake’s Raegan Holbrook.
“The whole point is to get kids in that environment with other kids like them,” Keefe said. “In terms of confidence, it’s a huge thing.”
Not only do the kids get to hit the slopes in the winter — or go whitewater rafting in the summer — they can form friendships and bond over similar struggles.
“It’s not just about what happens on the slopes,” Holbrook said. “It’s what happens at night playing cards and building relationships.”
Keefe, who became a Shriner patient in 2009, attended three Un-Limb-ited Camps and created bonds that have lasted over the years.
Last fall, Keefe asked his iPhone’s Siri to call Drew, his teammate. Instead, Siri called a Drew who Keefe had met years ago at camp.
Despite not having spoken in six years, Drew answered Keefe’s call right away.
“It’s so cool that I was able to call him and he instantly picked up and was like, ‘Dude, how you been?’” he said. “That’s the kind of bonds you created at camp. It’s not just like a one-off thing. It’s everlasting.”
From Sun Valley to the Paralympics
Skiing came with its challenges, however.
“I didn’t see a lot of results when I was younger, and it was so hard,” Keefe said. “And a lot of kids, you’d see them shut down and lose it. But I’m happy that I had the support to keep going, and the coaching staff at SVSEF were amazing. They pushed me.”
His ski career took a giant leap forward when he was introduced to the National Ability Center’s Alpine ski team while at an Un-Limb-ited Camp.
At 15, he won nationals, which put him “on the radar for the national team,” he said.
That would eventually lead to competing for the U.S. at the 2022 Beijing Paralympics as a senior in high school.
When Keefe was told he was going to Beijing, one of his first thoughts was about all the homework he’d have to make up. Fortunately, the ski academy he attended was very understanding.
“It just didn’t feel real that I was like this young and got a spot and I’m going,” he said.
Keefe’s young age also meant that his second-ever downhill race would be at the Paralympics.
Keefe wasn’t allowed to compete or train in downhill until he was 16. Prior to Beijing, his only downhill was at World Championships.
While he said he executed “pretty well,” his best performance came in the slalom, his specialty, where he finished ninth.
“I’m really chasing slalom in Cortina this time,” he said.
Unlike in Beijing, 15 to 20 of Keefe’s friends and family will travel to Italy for the Milan Cortina Paralympics.
The opportunity to represent his country at another Paralympic Games “means the world to me,” Keefe said.
“Just having the opportunity to represent your country is pretty cool. ... It’s an unforgettable experience,” he said.
“It brings me so much joy to like be there and have people watch and try and get people into it. Especially being a Paralympic athlete, sometimes we go unseen.”
Keefe’s Shriners Salt Lake City journey
Shriners has done more for Keefe than just providing the community he found at the Un-Limb-ited Camps. The hospital’s and staff’s impact has been longlasting.
Keefe still uses the ski leg design that was developed for him at Shriners.
“In terms of my career, I wouldn’t be skiing as well without that leg,” he said.
At Shriners, he also received care that would help transform his skiing career.
In 2017, Shriners Dr. Kristen Carroll performed a surgery on Keefe’s knee to manipulate his growth plate “that ended up giving me a lot of options and helping me out,” Keefe said.
According to Carroll, “the terminal sort of device on (Keefe’s) prosthesis takes up a lot of room the more active you are, because you need more ankle motion,” and Keefe’s “tibial segment was too long to fit what he needed for his sports.”
Carroll didn’t want Keefe to undergo a big surgery that would “slow him down too much because he really was blossoming,” she said.
The surgery she ended up performing would slow down Keefe’s growth on that side and wouldn’t significantly impact his training.
“It was really effective in shortening that distal sort of below the knee portion of his leg enough that he could wear a prosthesis that was more conducive to his athletic efforts, and that was awesome,” Carroll said.
As much as Carroll and Shriners helped Keefe physically, they also helped him mentally.
“She’s got quite some words of wisdom that still stick in my head,” Keefe said of Carroll. “She’s just always told me, ‘Just be confident. Don’t let anyone tell you your story,’ was something she told me. ‘You’re writing your own story. Don’t let anyone, anyone try and butt in on that.’”
Carroll told the Deseret News that she saw being Keefe’s “No. 1 cheerleader” as part of her role as his physician. She takes great pride in seeing any of her former patients succeed in their lives.
She watched Keefe’s first Paralympics and will watch him compete in his second. Regardless of if he medals, Carroll wants Keefe to do his best.
“I know he will do that, and so I wish him luck. But in my mind, he’s always been a winner, just a great kid. I’m very proud of him.”
