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Races of the Heart: Laurel sprint-car driver to pay tribute to Mom in a new way

One of the lasting lessons Robyn Dietz imparted to her son Phil, a competitive dirt sprint-car driver, was to always look for the good in life.

"Look for positives in everything, even if it's a rotten day or a rotten night," Phil Dietz recalled. "You've always got to find something. Maybe you did something wrong, but you can take that and learn from it and know what to do. There's always a positive that can come out of some negative situation."

It will be a fitting mantra for Dietz come Saturday morning.

For the second consecutive week, the American Sprint Car Series Frontier Region season opener in Great Falls has been cancelled due to inclement weather. Dietz didn't have to look far to find a positive.

For the first time, the Laurel resident will now be able to attend a very different race: the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure run in Helena, where his fiancee, Lisa Schoer, will participate in honor of Robyn, who succumbed to breast cancer in August 2011.

It was Robyn's third battle with the disease.

Typically, the ASCS circuit demands have excluded Dietz from participating in The Race For the Cure. But he has always wanted to do something to remember his mother.

"I just didn't know what to do and she (Lisa) kind of just took it and ran with it," Dietz said.

Schoer, who played basketball at Rocky Mountain College, is content to walk. But she has sprinted ahead in the fundraising.

Team Dietz Prevost Racing #72, as they are listed on the Susan G. Komen website, raised $4,889.72. It's the second highest total in Montana this year.

Though Schoer only met Robyn once, her story has altered her view of breast cancer.

"Going there is so much more than just a race," she said. "You see people that are going through chemo -- it's all the stages that Robyn had been in, to where you almost see her in their faces."

Schoer does not have any family history of breast cancer. But her upcoming marriage to Dietz has forced to her accept that one day she might.

"My mom, she made the comment 'It doesn't run in our family,' and I said, 'Well, there's a chance it could run in mine, so I'm gonna do what I can to stop it now.' " she said.

With Dietz's Great Falls race cancelled, she'll have company Saturday. It's an opportunity he relishes.

"I'm excited to see what takes place," he said. "I've only heard stories. I think it'll just be exciting to see everybody that is affected by breast cancer being there and having such a good attitude about things and being able to take part in that."

Dietz, who grew up less than a mile from the old Magic City Speedway, has been racing competitively since the age of 14. He describes racing a 360 dirt sprint car as comparable to "driving a go-kart on steroids. There's no transmission, so there's no slip, just 700 horsepower right at the rear wheels all the time."

Dietz is a four-time circuit overall-points champion in his "15 or 16 years" of competitive driving.

His successes have earned him an extensive support system today, but in the beginning it consisted primarily of his mother and his father, Ken, who runs the 45-year-old family business Dietz Auto & Truck Salvage. It was Ken who got his son into racing.

"My family has always been a big motorsports family, my dad and my uncle used to race motorcycles all across the Midwest and Northwest, semi-professionally," Phil said.

In his two-man parental pit crew, Dietz's parents each had separate but important roles.

"My Dad ... early on he was basically the mechanic, the crew chief," he said. "My mom was always there to do what moms do and keep everybody motivated and when me and my dad were bickering back-and-forth, she was the peace officer. She played probably the most important role."

When Robyn's first breast cancer diagnosis came after a mammogram in 2004, Dietz recalled how hard it was to absorb the news.

"The first time was probably the toughest because you just didn't know what to expect, it's kind of a shock, it just comes out of the blue," he said. "You hear the word cancer and it's like 'Oh man, that's a death sentence.'"

Robyn's resilience gave Dietz a semblance of confidence when the cancer struck a third time.

"You know the third time we heard, it's like, 'Oh well, you know it'll be a fight, but she's tough, she's gonna get through it."

Dietz will always remember Robyn's toughness in her off-and-on seven-year battle.

"I can honestly say she's a tougher person than I'll ever be because she was always the one that said, 'You know, I'll be okay, we're gonna get through this,'" he said. "She was always the one that was probably the foundation for the rest of us to build off of because she was so positive about everything all the time."

The third time, though, Robyn's cancer was too aggressive. She died at home in the presence of her family on Aug. 4, 2011.

All the while Dietz and his family grew closer. The cancer forced them to communicate more and helped him appreciate the time he had with loved ones.

During Robyn's struggles, Dietz continued racing. When his mother was up to it, she would attend.

"I think sometimes ... that was an escape for her," he said. "The year she passed away was in the middle of one of our racing seasons and she actually went to races that year up until she got too sick to go."

After Robyn's passing, Dietz, with the help of Trever Kirkland, a fellow racer in the ASCS Fronter Region who will be best man at his wedding, fashioned an old picture of himself, his mother and sister Ashley into a sticker for his sprint car.

The portrait reveals a 3-year-old Phil, eyes squinted, mouth drawn back into the kind of toddler's smile that looks halfway between shifting to a laugh or an "ew" as he holds 1-year old Ashley.

Next to Phil and Ashley, looking a little tired but a lot happy, is Robyn, smiling. Below them in pink lettering are the words "Always with us..."

Eventually, the rain will give way to sunshine and the ASCS Frontier Region will start its season. Come race day, as Dietz's car circles the track at speeds of over 100 mph, the sticker adorning the left side won't be much more than a blur.

A smudge of pink. A streak of memory.

"I actually run this sticker all year," he said.

Saturday in Helena, in a sea of pink, there won't be a sticker and there won't be a car and there won't be Robyn. But the positive, the good in things, will be there.

And Phil Dietz will see it.

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