Support Salena's Journey to Recover Stolen Gear

Hello beautiful souls! I am raising funds for a dear friend and all around amazing artist & photographer - Salena Salinas. She recently moved and in the process over $5000 of photography gear was stolen from her home. With this she now has to cancel all of her photography gigs for the summer which is the MAIN portion of her income.

This is of course a MASSIVE expense and setback.

Salena is an incredibly strong, independent young woman who always goes out of her way to help others and expects NOTHING in return from anyone she helps. She is an absolute light to our creative community here in Denver, and wants to constantly be service and value to others. I have never met a young woman in this community who presents herself more seriously and professionally as she does. If you know Salena, Nothing has come easy in her life. She works for everything she has. She would be frustrated to accept handouts, but I believe in helping people when they need it the most, and good things happen to good people. Sometimes things happen to us to teach us how to receive from others.

As a creatives, our gear is our lifeline, and often times the amount it takes to create our work does not have a large return on our investment, but we create for the love of creating, transmuting emotions, and sharing memories. Her camera was her heart and soul, and the second most expensive thing she has ever purchased, so to lose this is is more than just a financial and career setback....it's emotionally and spiritually draining.

Please donate what you can every little thing counts.

A message from Salena:

"These past seven months have been some of the hardest of my life.

After days of sleep deprivation, pushing myself to the edge, feeding unhoused folks with whatever leftovers we had, and giving away over a ton of furniture, clothes, and belongings just trying to clear out my home with little help someone stole over $5k worth of my camera gear while I was moving.

I didn’t realize it was all gone until I finished unpacking this morning. Because of that, I’m shutting down my photography business until the foreseeable future and have to cancel every festival and show I was hired for this year including Secret Dreams.

I don’t have parents or family I can call for financial help. I never have. Everything I owned, I worked for.

But this isn’t about the money

To whoever took it, you didn’t just steal gear. You took the one thing that kept me going in this world when everything else fell apart.

When I first moved to Denver, I was living in abandoned houses in the dead of winter. I didn’t even steal food when I was starving.

So yeah, this one hurts but I still forgive you.

I hope whatever led you to do this gets healed.

I hope you find something real, so you don’t have to take from people who are barely holding it together.

I hope your life softens.

If anyone feels called to commission work or help me get back on my feet, I’m starting over from zero. I appreciate you.

– Salena"