Jared Kay Cook-1977-1999

Life Unfair? Man Sees Rainbow

By: Lee Benson

Deseret News Columnist

     Jared Cook thought about it.  He thought about it hard, keeping that 20-inch rainbow thrashing around in the net, the biggest fish he’d ever caught, a fish that, if it were human, would get the parts Brad Pitt gets and date the homecoming queen, it was that good-looking.  He held it up by its big jaw and together they posed in the boat as Byron Gunderson put down his fly rod and snapped the picture that would secure the evidence.  Then Jared reached over the side of the boat, leaned close to the surface of a lake that just might be the finest trout-fishing pond in the Utah boundaries, and let the monster loose.  Maybe next summer, they’ll hook up again.  At least that’s the plan

     Jared Cook is 22 and he has leukemia.  How he caught it or how it caught him, he’ll never know, but it is a serious thing.  Since July, when a canker sore that wouldn’t heal proved to be the tip of a cancerous iceberg, Jared has gone through chemotherapy, radiation treatment, a bone marrow transplant from his brother, and leukocyte replacement.  In the arena of medicine vs leukemia, that’s the whole arsenal.  There is nothing more. 

     Three weeks ago, the doctors at LDS Hospital sent Jared home, and they all had their fingers crossed.  It has come to that and prayer.

     Jared is very big on catch and release.

     He could have spent the last five months sulking, feeling sorry for himself, wondering why him, why now?  He’s barely a year returned from a two-year LDS mission to Puerto Rico, barely three years removed from high school graduation.  He’s paid some dues, he’s done some service, so isn’t this when the payback begins?  Isn’t his when you get to let your hair down, not lose it?

     And he might have done just that. Moped around, depressed about the possibility of dying—if he hadn’t been too busy living.

     After leaving the hospital this last time, when friends asked Jared what he wanted to do, he was ready with an answer.  He wanted to catch some big fish.

     One of those friends, an avid fisherman named Stirling Broadhead, went to the Fish Tech store on Highland Drive to see if someone could direct him to a hot fishing spot.  Byron Gunderson, the store’s owner, overheard the conversation.

     He knew a place they could go Byron told them.  A fishing place so good it doesn’t have an official name.  Unofficially, it’s simply know as “Dave’s Lake,” after the man who owns the property and stocks the trout, Dave Freed.

     A lot of people know Dave Freed as one of Utah’s legendary athletes, a onetime captain of the U.S. Davis Cup Tennis Team.  What they didn’t know is Dave Freed, Mr. Soft Heart.  One call and it was done.

     A front was blowing in this past Wednesday afternoon when outdoor editor Ray Grass and I met Byron, Jared, Stirling, and Darwin Moore, Jared’s home teacher in his LDS ward, at the edge of Dave’s Lake.  The temperature was dropping, gray storm clouds were forming, the waves were white caps.  Not ideal fishing conditions.

     Four hours later, Jared nonetheless had eight fish to his credit, all caught and released, and that didn’t include a 20-inch brook that was within a foot of the boat when it managed to wriggle off his fly.

     Me?  The only thing I caught was a lot of grief for not catching anything on Utah’s finest fishing lake.  For Jared, the adversity only made it sweeter.

     As he left at dusk, all he took from Dave’s Lake was a big smile and a confidence that he knew everything was going to work out just fine.

     In a lot of ways it already has.