Advisory Board

Salina is super awesome

Dr. Jim Caruso is the Chief Medical Examiner and Coroner for the City and County of Denver. He received his undergraduate and medical training at the University of Illinois and completed a Pathology residency and a fellowship in Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Caruso spent nearly 30 years in the United States Navy during which time he served as both a Diving Medical Officer and a Flight Surgeon.

He continues to practice clinical Diving Medicine and has been a consulting physician for the Divers Alert Network since 1994. Dr. Caruso has published numerous scientific abstracts, peer-reviewed papers, and book chapters in the field of diving medicine and has also authored scores of medical information articles for recreational diving magazines. He teaches diving medicine topics at courses and seminars including those provided by the Divers Alert Network, the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Authority and is a Fellow of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society.

Dr. Rick Zimmerman’s journey to Denver Adaptive Divers is a beautiful triangulation of a history of diving, expertise in rehabilitative medicine and a passion for sports and adventure. Rick has been a PADI certified diver since 1996. Over the years he has managed to dive many unique places such as Hawaii, multiple locations in Mexico and the Caribbean; the Mediterranean Sea; Malaysia; and of course Cayman Brac, home of DAD annual life-changing retreat.

Dr. Z is a Board-certified Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician completing his training at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in 2004. He is also fellowship-trained in Interventional Spine and Pain Management. It was in Virginia that he integrated his passion for skiing (he is a former member and assistant coach for the University of Colorado Ski Team) and rehabilitation medicine.

For two years he trained to teach spinal cord injured athletes to ski in a modified sit-ski called a Monoski. He then volunteered three years for the National Sports Center for Disabilities in Winter Park with the Nordic ski program. Rick proclaims being part of these type of activities that transform “disability to ability,” is some of the most rewarding work he has ever enjoyed. Rick says, “Just like snow on an incline, water creates weightlessness that that removes physical barriers and creates mobility that is unattainable on dry land. It’s pure magic.”

Rick joined the DAD team in 2019 and serves on the medical advisory board. He looks forward to many years of beautiful dives with new friends and service with this organization he is so proud to be part of.

Judi has worked her whole career with people having special needs including physical, developmental, intellectual, social, or mental health concerns. Her first nonprofit/grant writing opportunity was setting up a wilderness experience program for youth in foster care. This led to several years working in Therapeutic Recreation for hospitalized youth and adults, in mental health settings and community programs such as the Winter Park Disabled Ski program and the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center.

She then changed her focus to early childhood intervention. In the field of early intervention, she worked with birth to three-year-old children with various delays in development including Down syndrome, autism, prematurity and physical delays. Judi was appointed Director of the Early Intervention Program through a local Community Centered Board. The program served all eligible children in Arapahoe and Douglas Counties. There were over 3000 babies and toddlers receiving services from OT, PT, Speech, Behavior, Social Work, Psychology and other needed developmental providers. Judi managed a budget of over six million dollars from multiple sources including county mill levy funds, state funds, insurance billing and federal dollars. Building and supporting a strong family advocacy component was key to serving the needs of these children. Grant support was needed to fully fund this program as well and fell under Judi’s job description.

Judi has BA in Psychology, an MA in Therapeutic Recreation, and PhD in Educational Psychology from DU. She was subsequently licensed to provide Early Childhood Special Education.

Judi’s interests in physical activity led her to getting certified in SCUBA in 2004 and then moving on to training to work with Scuba Rangers and becoming an Assistant Instructor through SSI.

Kara attended medical school at University of Colorado, and during that time learned to love scuba diving during a trip to Cozumel in 2010. She completed her residency at Swedish Family Medicine in 2013, and has gone on to practice both primary care and hospital medicine in urban and rural settings. While working as Medical Director at a rural critical access hospital, she attended Diver Alert Network’s course on diving medicine in 2015.

In 2017, she launched her own Leach Dive & Hyperbaric Medicine Consulting and supervised the hyperbaric chamber at Rose Hospital’s Amputation Prevention Center. In the last several years, she has expanded her personal diving into the technical realm with side mount, full cave, and decompression diving – all with dreams of diving deep wrecks. “I am thrilled to be working with Denver Adaptive Divers and am passionate about helping anyone who wants to dive figure out how to do so as safely as possible,” she said.

Salina became involved with Denver Adaptive Divers in 2022 when the organization wanted to have a more quantitative understanding of the impact of DAD’s program on its participants and to collect data on how the program could improve. Salina, who had just completed her PhD in Research Methods and Statistics, was happy to assist. But it was when she went on the 2022 Cayman Brac trip and saw the positive impact of scuba diving on the participants with spinal cord injury as well as experiencing the camaraderie of the DAD community, she was on board hook, line, and sinker.

Salina has a diverse background. With a chemical engineering degree and an MBA, Salina has worked in manufacturing operations, information technology/systems development, strategic planning, and marketing. She has served on the Board of St. Anne’s Episcopal School and has volunteered with the Colorado Ballet, Canine Partners of the Rockies, and We Don’t Waste, and the Tuck School of Business Administration.

A relative newcomer to scuba diving (2018), she is trying to catch up to her more scuba experienced DAD peers.  She also travels extensively, hikes, studies language(s), knits, and plays classical piano. She states “It has been an amazing experience to be part of this big hearted, joyful, and dedicated organization”.