Some people visit St. John on vacation, go to the beach and that’s the last residents ever hear of them. Not Leslie McKibben. She’s already made a difference from her home in Melbourne, Fla. by raising $3,000 for St. John’s 2012 Relay for Life and volunteered at the 2011 Just Play Day.
“I love doing this stuff,” she said.
McKibben, her husband Steve, and sons Shane, 21, and Jason, 19, were recently on St. John for their eighth vacation villa visit to celebrate her 50th birthday.
She’s a regular contributor to the travel forum www.virgin-islands-on-line.com. Through the forum she learned about February’s Relay for Life, and since she couldn’t be on island at the time to participate, she decided she’d ask forum participants to pledge money for the cause.
And because she wanted to participate, she did so in Florida by walking 57.2 miles at an outside mall. She said some friends came and walked a mile here and a mile there to keep her going throughout the 18-hour event.
It wasn’t until the last 15 minutes that the security guard finally asked her what she was doing, she said with a laugh.
She developed an interest in Relay for Life by working on a similar event in Florida. Her son’s school participated and she got involved.
McKibben, a pediatric physical therapist, called the Relay for Life walk "life-changing." That said, she and her husband hope to make another life change by moving to St. John in the near future.
“It’s time for a change,” she said.
On the day before they left for their vacation, he lost the job he held for 34 years. Both view it as an opportunity to do something new and spent some of their vacation brainstorming possible business plans.
No doubt, St. John will welcome the McKibbens with open arms because if all goes well and they make the move, they plan to be just as involved on St. John as they are in Florida.
“Whatever I do, I do with 100 percent passion,” she said.
They’ll arrive with their eyes open. Since they first started visiting in 2006, they’ve made friends, learned the island’s facts and foibles and know that a vacation isn’t the same as a life on St. John.
The warm weather is a plus. McKibben, a native of Rochester, N.Y., got her bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y. From there, she went on to work at Colombia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City before heading off to Virginia for a similar job.
It snowed in Virginia, so in 1987 McKibben headed further south to Florida because she likes warm weather. She now owns her own physical therapy practice, but said should the St. John dream come true, she’s open to switching gears.
“If it’s meant to be, it will be,” she said.
