Wendy Rigby was awarded a 2024 Telly Award, a prestigious industry award that honors excellence in television and video.
Rigby, who holds the title Marketing and Communications Specialist at Estes Park Health, won the award in the “Fitness, Health, and Wellness” category for a video about “the procedure everyone loves to hate, a colonoscopy.”
The four-minute production features Deborah Adams of Estes Park when she underwent the procedure performed by Dr. Jennifer McLellan at the hospital.
When asked why she was willing to go public with her colonoscopy procedure, Adams told the Estes Valley Voice, “Well, first of all, I’m just a very open person. I think it’s really, really important. I did it because I just think a lot of lives could be saved if people did colonoscopies.”
For Adams the diagnostic procedure is especially important because her stepdaughter, Maryalyse Adams Mercado, died of colon cancer May 11. “Maryalyse was 48 and it’s kind of ironic because she’s a doctor,” said Adams.
According to Adams, her stepdaughter, a graduate of Estes Park High School, had been experiencing stomach pains but let it go, “You know just how life gets pretty hectic when you’re midlife and raising a family and working. She put it off and by the time she finally went to get it checked out it was pretty advanced colon cancer that had spread everywhere,” said Adams.
When Adams was asked if she would be willing to have her colonoscopy featured in Rigby’s video she readily agreed, “I was like, oh my God, this is important.”
Rigby’s fifth Telly Award
The award is one of five Tellys Rigby has won during her career, in addition to two Emmy Awards for news reporting, and three additional nominations. She has also been recognized with more than 40 other professional awards by the Texas Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, Dallas Press Club, American College of Emergency Physicians, and the University of Texas School of Journalism.
Rigby has an undergraduate degree in broadcast and print journalism from Trinity University and an M.A. in communication from Johns Hopkins University. She and her husband, Jan, moved to Estes Park in 2020 from Texas where she had been a news anchor and medical reporter for KENS-TV in San Antonio, and the director of multimedia communications at both Baptist Health Systems and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute.
After moving to Estes Park, she became managing editor of the Estes Park Trail Gazette, a role she held for three years. In 2022, Rigby became seriously ill with a bone infection. She was hospitalized at UC Health Medical Center of the Rockies for six days and then had to have infusions every day for six weeks for IV antibiotics at EP Health.
“They helped save my life here. They healed me,” Rigby said explaining how she had a peripherally inserted central catheter or PICC line in her arm for the intensive course of treatment. “It was horrendous,” Rigby said.
The opportunity to take the communications position was offered to her in the fall of 2022 and she began working at the hospital in early 2023. “I felt called to take the job, and it’s been wonderful. I have been doing things they didn’t do before,” said Rigby.
“My role is to communicate both internally and externally. We have more than 300 employees. We are one of the largest employers in town. I communicate with them. I communicate with the public. I communicate with the media,” said Rigby who started doing podcasts and videos “to tell the story of EP Health in a new way.”
Rigby has produced videos for the hospital and clinic that are shown on monitors in the waiting rooms. The videos take people behind the scenes to show them what goes on during an operation, in a diagnostic procedure, or in the lab.
Rigby’s videos are both entertaining for patients who are waiting to see their health care provider and instructive. The topics of some of her videos for EP Health have covered how hernias are repaired, the role of the pharmacist, trauma care, and lung cancer screening.
Rigby’s position combines both communications and marketing and having been a patient at EP Health she brings a personal perspective to the job. She commissioned Estes Park artist Michael Young to create murals featuring aspen trees in two waiting rooms, and she worked with the Art Center of Estes Park to have local artists display their work in the infusion center.
“People come there every day, for hours at a time. A lot of them are cancer patients getting chemotherapy,” said Rigby who sees her role in marketing as helping to warm up the clinical environment with human touches such as beautiful art.
“I’ve tried to get EP Health involved in the community in some different ways,” she said. “We want people to get to know us and know that we are an integral part of the community because we are,” said Rigby. One of the marketing initiatives Rigby has spearheaded is having the hospital sponsor the jerseys for the youth basketball teams at the community center. Another is having the hospital be the gold sponsor this summer of Tuesday Night Live held at the Lake Estes Marina. “I’ve just tried some different, creative things, but of course my favorite thing that I do is the videos because that’s my heart and soul. I love producing videos.”
In addition to her role at the hospital, Rigby volunteers her skills in communications with Estes Park United Methodist Church and Crossroads Ministries.
A Texan at heart who is passionate about living in Estes, Rigby is an avid hiker. Two hikes she is proud of doing because of the challenges they present are Twin Sisters and the Estes Cone, but she says her favorite hike is to Mills Lake for its stunning beauty.