64-yr-old mom taking 1956 Porsche 356A to Antarctica to help fight child trafficking
Renée Brinkerhoff has been racing around the world and now she's heading to the ends of the earth to help raise awareness about child trafficking.
Renée Brinkerhoff is on the road trip of a lifetime.
(Valkyrie Racing)
The Denver-based mother of four took up classic car road rallying eight years ago and is still at it at age 64, having visited six continents in a 1956 Porsche 356A that shares her birth year.
“It was basically a one-liner that I’d been telling myself for over thirty years and I finally heard that voice in my head. One day I’m going to race a car” she told Fox News Autos.
“It was a have-to, not a want-to.”
(Valkyrie Racing)
So she found the car, which she says was a trailer queen when she bought it, and had it built into a racing machine that could handle the week-long 2013 La Carrera Panamericana rally in Mexico, where she finished first in her class and got the bug.
“I felt all these things I’ve never felt. I learned about who I was as a person. It totally changed who I was,” she said.
“I only intended to go race one time, that was it. Go do that thing you told yourself you gotta go do. But it got a life of its own.”
Brinkerhoff returned to Mexico and also started entering other races. Then something else happened that changed her life.
(Valkyrie Racing)
She met an FBI agent working to track human traffickers involved in prostitution and child pornography and became interested in the subject, which soon hit her in the face. On a bus ride to a rental car agency, she noticed a man beside her was looking at what appeared to be child pornography on his phone and felt it was a sign.
“I don't believe there's an accident. Someone was knocking on my door and I was supposed to do something about it,” she said.
That’s when her rallying took a turn.
“I didn’t like to talk too much about my racing, I’m a little shy about that, but my husband, my family would bring it up with friends and then we’d see their mouth drop open and their eyes start getting big and you realize they’re listening to me,” she said.
She turned her hobby into Valkyrie Racing and launched the Project 356 World Rally Tour to raise awareness about child trafficking and money to help fight it, working with aid groups around the world, including Kenya's HAART Foundation in Kenya and The Exodus Road in Colorado.
Renée and Christina met with the HAART Foundation in Kenya while they were in the country for the East African Safari Classic Rally.
Along with the La Carrera Panamericana, the team has entered the Targa Tasmania in Australia, the East African Safari Classic Rally -- where her daughter Christina joined her as navigator – the Caminos del Inca in Peru and the month-long Peking-to-Paris race across Asia and Europe.
The effort has raised over $200,000 for charity so far, but the goal is $1 million, and she’s going to the ends of the earth to reach it.
(Google Earth)
The next stop on the tour is Antarctica’s Union Glacier, where she’ll drive the Porsche on a 356-mile route she mapped out with polar adventurer Jason De Carteret. The Brit holds the record for the fastest overland trip to the South Pole along with Kieron Bradley, a chassis engineer for Lotus who is currently getting the Porsche ready for the trip, which will mark the first time one of the brand’s cars has ever visited the continent.
(Valkyrie Racing)
It’s being converted with tracks, skis, solar panels and a front crevasse bar to keep it from falling into hidden cracks in the ice. When it’s complete in October, it’ll be put on a ship and sent to Chile, from where the team will fly with it to Antarctica early next year for a race against the clock to the tour’s finish line.
The Porsche will feature front skis and a red livery when it is complete. (Valkyrie Racing)
Brinkerhoff said they’ll need to put the finishing touches on it and test it at the location before they head out with a support vehicle following them, and they only have three weeks to complete the trip before the plane returns to pick them up.
“Actually doing the 356 miles should not take more than three or four days, but we have to allow for weather. We could be in a whiteout for a week. We don't know what we're going to come across,” she said.
Brinkerhoff, whose family runs a successful restaurant business in Denver, didn't reveal exactly how much all of this will cost, but that "it's my nest egg," and along with the transportation requires a large bond to ensure that every single thing they bring in, they bring out.
"We've set this goal and we have to finish," she said.
If all goes to plan, when they get back to the blue ice runway they’ll reinstall the wheels and tires and establish an Antarctic land speed record before they pack up and head home. But don’t expect her or the Porsche to stay there for long. Brinkerhoff said people have suggested she put it in a museum, but she has different ideas.
“I want to keep racing it. It's a car that's got to be driven and have new adventures and break more boundaries and see different places and achieve new things. So I can't imagine it being on display somewhere.”