News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Diane Prescott wears a variety of different hats for the Sisters Rodeo Association — and a cowboy hat is just one of them.
One of her major volunteer efforts is in creating about 450 welcome bags for Rodeo contestants. Prescott and a crew of willing hands gather swag from around the community — “anything useful for the cowboys” — and assemble it for presentation.
Prescott also paints, works on the landscaping, assists in selecting and distributing the Sisters Rodeo posters, works on kitchen cleanup, and ushers. Her primary task, though, is to work with board member Roger Dwight in the development and service of sponsors.
Prescott has been a Sisters Rodeo super-fan since 2004, when she visited the area at the invitation of her friend Chris Lentz.
“I knew her from San Diego,” Prescott recalled. “We were in a riding club in San Diego. I came up here and stayed with her and she said, ‘Come on, Diane! We’re going to the Sisters Rodeo!”
Enthralled with the action and with the majestic sight of a Rodeo sunset over the Three Sisters, she was “bowled over.”
The die was cast.
“I wanted to be part of it,” she said.
Prescott grew up in Southern California — and she says she “always was a horsey gal.”
“I always wanted one,” she said. “I was a city girl and didn’t have one. My cousins did and I was always asking my mother if I could go live with my cousins.”
Prescott’s career was in marketing and sales in the computer industry. She did a lot of trade-show work, some of it in Las Vegas — where she discovered the National Finals Rodeo.
Transferred from Santa Barbara to San Diego, she delved deep into the equestrian world.
“I’ve always been a trail rider,” she said. “Living in San Diego, my horse was boarded and all I ever wanted was to live where he could live in the backyard with me,” she said.
When the time in her life came when that was possible, she thought Colorado might be an option. She planned a trip to Yellowstone — but detoured to Sisters for that fateful visit with Lentz.
“Pretty soon we were window-shopping at real estate offices,” she said.
Trail riding remains a passion, and one of the major attractions of Sisters Country.
“You can ride anywhere you can see, basically,” she said. “That’s new when you come from San Diego.”
Prescott also loves to travel and explore her adopted state. Horsepower isn’t the only way she gets around — she’s an avid hiker, too. You’ll also find her on hand for live music around Sisters, and she volunteers for the Sisters Folk Festival.
She loves the Sisters Rodeo Association and all it does — even outside the second weekend in June. She notes that the Rodeo provides scholarships for local students and myriad opportunities for fundraising for local service organizations and nonprofits.
“I think it’s surprising to people how much Rodeo does for the community, because a lot of it is under the radar,” she said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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