Gretchen Schoenstein

Gretchen has dealt with multiple autoimmune diseases, including but not limited to Hashimoto’s and Sarcoidosis. She was diagnosed with Hashis when she was a young adolescent and Sarcoid struck her down in the Fall of 2006, unable to walk or breathe well. As someone who has to pay close attention to her body, Gretchen has tried to maintain her health for both physical and mental benefits. After her sarcoid diagnosis, she was told she’d never run again – which initially she was ‘okay’ with but it led to living a very fear-based and cautious life. After 3.5 years of this new normal, and some big unexpected life changes, Gretchen decided to train for a half marathon in 2010, against doctors orders. The emotion and accomplishment Gretchen felt upon completion of that goal, and a recovery that did not kick her out of the game but was simply more information to process, she then decided to run another and another all across the country. In October 2016, Gretchen ran her 50th half marathon exactly 10 years to the week she’d been laying in the hospital bed for eight days on a morphine drip. As that event approached, Gretchen knew she wanted the milestone to mean something more than a number and so she reached out to Operation Shooting Star and Audrey in hopes of connecting with the organization and making her 50th half marathon a fundraising effort to help OSS’s mission of raising funds and awareness about the more than 80 auto immune diseases that affect more than 24 million Americans, in many cases severely hampering their way of life. Gretchen is extremely proud to be a National Ambassador for Operation Shooting Star, and more importantly to consider Audrey a friend and ally in this fight for awareness and a cure.

To contact Gretchen directly, you may reach her via email at gretchen@operationshootingstar.org.