Thomas Walter Allind

Thomas Walter Allind, known to family and friends as Tom, Tommy or Kazzoo, was a Colorado general contractor, adaptive athlete and devoted family man. He was born on 7 August 1963 in Chicago, Illinois, and for most of his adult life lived in the Denver area, including Parker, Colorado. He died on 25 September 2026 at the age of 63.

Before a life-altering injury, Allind built and ran his own construction business in Colorado. Those who knew him remembered an infectious sense of humor and a gift for solving unfamiliar problems, traits that carried from job sites into family life. Around 2012 he suffered a spinal cord injury while horseback riding that left him quadriplegic and ended his contracting career. Rather than let the injury define him, he turned to adaptive sport with the same competitive energy he had once brought to hockey.

Connected to Adaptive Adventures through his daughter Leya, who interned with the organization, Allind took up sled hockey with the Colorado Avalanche sled hockey program and returned to the mountains on adaptive ski equipment, including a sit-ski bike at Keystone Resort. A January 2019 Summit Daily and Aspen Times feature by Antonio Olivero described him skiing beside fellow adaptive athletes and credited his daughter's encouragement with opening that chapter of his life. Friends and family later remembered that refusal to be sidelined as one of the defining features of his later years.

In his final years he faced a second health battle after being diagnosed with multiple system atrophy, a rare progressive neurological disease that affects movement, balance and autonomic functions. His family's obituary, published through Front Range Burial and Cremation Service and carried on Denver Gazette obituary pages, said the disease ultimately took his life and that he met it with courage, dignity and stubborn strength.

Allind is survived by his wife, Susan Allind; their three children, Leya Nolan, Michael Allind and Sara Allind; and three granddaughters, Avery, Emilie and Giulietta. He was also survived by four siblings and ten nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Edward and Therese Allind. A memorial service was planned for 3 October 2026 at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Littleton, Colorado, where family and friends gathered to remember a builder, husband, father and adaptive athlete who rebuilt an active life after injury.