POSTED: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 -- 5:00 p.m.
By NBC15's Dana Brueck
An inspirational story of a local father who serves the county and the country. He has found yet another way to give back to his community.
Scott Riggs faces criminals, has fought Cancer and for freedom. Now, he's fighting to help children of service members.
Riggs has four children of his own -- Jacob, Ian, Tristan and Rowan. As you can imagine, life in their household gets busy. But this Dane County Sheriff's deputy and Major in the Air National Guard has accepted a new challenge.
"I didn't used to like to swim, never really biked before and I wasn't really a big runner."
But Riggs is training for the Ironman in September.
"It seems like a whole other job."
He did a half-Ironman in Racine this past weekend.
Riggs will do Madison's grueling course as a charity participant, to raise money for the organization Our Military Kids.
"When we were deployed in 2009, my kids had their Karate paid for."
The organization lends financial support to military families to keep kids active and lives as normal as possible while a parent's deployed.
And Riggs has been deployed overseas 5 times with another assignment scheduled next year.
"I think probably the hardest time I had deploying was hearing Jacob in 2003 saying, 'Daddy, I miss you. I want you to come home,' and he started crying, so that was that was probably one of the most difficult things."
Also difficult: a house fire while Riggs was in Qatar in 2009.
"So I got to live in the hotel after coming back."
It was his return from a 2006 deployment to Afghanistan when doctors diagnosed Riggs with a life-threatening Cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma.
"He told me at the end he's like when you first came in, he's like I didn't think you had 30 days to live."
Riggs beat the Cancer but hasn't stopped fighting to give back.
"Everything just flies by, and just enjoy it while you can because you never know when you don't have the opportunity to."
"Just with support of family and friends, you can pretty much make it through anything."
You can help Scott Riggs reach his fundraising goal of $2,000.
Also, Midwest Professional Karate in DeForest is having a fundraiser.
It's a kickathon Aug. 24th at 5:30 pm at Veterans Park in DeForest to raise money for Our Military Kids.
