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Not slip-slidin' away: Cancer survivor gives back by setting records

Temple sophomore Ben Baker, 20, had liver failure, then cancer, now raises $ by beating obscure world records. Next up: Slip ’N Slide.

Temple’s Ben Baker: Gunning for slippery record. (TEMPLE UNIVERSITY)
Temple’s Ben Baker: Gunning for slippery record. (TEMPLE UNIVERSITY)Read more

BEN BAKER never wastes time feeling sorry for himself.

Not when an uncommon disease he'd had since childhood caused his liver to fail in 2012, just days shy of his 18th birthday. Not when he was diagnosed, less than two years after a lifesaving liver transplant, with a rare form of post-transplant lymphoma - and not when the cancer reared its ugly head a second time, just when his doctors thought he'd officially beaten it.

Baker, 20, didn't even get down last week, after he hit a bump in the road and was lifelined to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to be treated for problems with his spleen from all the trauma his young body has taken.

Instead, from his hospital room, the Temple University sophomore kept right on planning a May 2 fundraising event during which he and dozens of collaborators will try to break the Guinness World Record for most miles traveled in an hour on a backyard Slip 'N Slide.

Baker said that he and the others would try to travel 26 miles collectively on a Slip 'N Slide to be set up at Camp Conquest in Denver, Lancaster County, near Baker's hometown of Lancaster. The goal, besides breaking the record, is to raise $15,000 for the Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland - the organization that helped Baker get the liver transplant that saved his life.

"What keeps me going is probably - it's pretty cliche - but the mind-set that I am blessed compared to other people," said Baker, who transferred last year to Temple's School of Tourism and Hospitality Management from Mechanicsburg's Messiah College to focus his studies on event planning. "There are people in other countries who have it substantially worse than I do, so I don't like to mope. That's what keeps me going."

Even in his short time at Temple, Baker has made an impression on the university community, said School of Tourism associate vice dean Jeffrey Montague.

"Ben Baker's personality stands out . . . despite some of his difficulties," Montague said. "In a dark room, he can be a ray of sunlight, and people don't even understand what he's going through, and he still fights through that like every day's a good day."

The Slip 'N Slide world-record attempt, which will involve up to 100 people sliding to cover as much distance as possible in an hour, won't be the first that Baker has had a hand in breaking.

Last year, in the first of what he hopes will be an annual event, he and his charity group, the Night Razors, raised about $7,000 for Living Legacy when they broke the Guinness World Record for the longest distance traveled by a relay team on Razor kick scooters in 24 hours. They rode 344 miles on the scooters at a Mechanicsburg sports complex.

Although his cancer is in remission, Baker's recent setback took him out of class temporarily and landed him back at Johns Hopkins, where he's been treated since childhood. But the student, who turns 21 next month, has no intention of letting his health slow him down or keep him from showing up at the Slip 'N Slide world-record event.

"I will definitely be there," Baker told the Daily News by phone from the hospital last week. "I did my last world record after the cancer, so I should be able to do this one."

Baker's sunny outlook and his propensity for helping others was partly forged by his acute awareness that life is a gift, said his father, John Baker. The liver that Ben received in 2012 - just in the nick of time to save his life - came from a 17-year-old Maryland boy who was otherwise in good health before he suddenly died of a peanut-allergy reaction.

"He has a real sense [that] life has been a gift to him, so he doesn't take it for granted, and he wants to give back and make a difference," John Baker said. "I think that's the other reason Ben feels so committed. . . . They told us he was real high on the donor list because he got within about 20 days of dying before he got his organ. He was in final shutdown and we knew death was coming when we got the call" about the donor liver.

Since his transplant, Ben has stayed in touch with the donor's family. They attended the Razor-scooter world-record event last year.

John Baker brimmed with pride when he spoke about his son's unyielding spirit and steadfast dedication to giving back.

"Ben has an interest in thinking beyond himself, and I think the world is a better place when people do that," the father said. "I think his generation has a reputation for maybe not engaging in the community as much as past generations. It's good to see that Ben maybe will be a good example. . . . Even in his hospital bed, he's trying to keep this thing floating and moving forward."

Beyond next month's Slip 'N Slide record, Ben Baker has his sights set on studying abroad, graduating from Temple and pursuing a career that will give back - like event-planning for a charity or hospital, he said.

"Anything that's bettering something else or someone else, that's what I want to be able to do," he said.

He has a few more things on his bucket list, too, according to his dad - like skydiving and breaking the world record for the most consecutive hours spent on a Ferris wheel, another record he's been approved by Guinness to break someday.

"My desire is to live life to the fullest right now. It's definitely difficult, but I've got to have priorities," Baker said. "It's fulfilling to see all that group of guys [the Night Razors] who have been with me through this, to see their faces after we break a world record, and to see the foundation [members'] faces when we hand them a check.

" 'Pay it forward' is a good way to put it."