Credit: Courtesy of the Kile family
NEED TO KNOW
- Sierra Kile honors her late father Darryl Kile’s legacy through her work with the St. Louis Cardinals community
- She is part of the MLB’s Playing with Heart campaign to raise awareness about high cholesterol and heart disease risks
- Sierra shares her father’s story to educate others and continue his legacy of kindness and positivity beyond baseball
Sierra Kile was 5 years old when her father, to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Through the program, Sierra will participate in onsite events to help “spread awareness through my own story.”
The biggest reason they’re doing this, she says, is to “spread awareness about just bad cholesterol, getting to a doctor, learning about your own bad cholesterol and just about the risks of heart disease.”
Credit: Sporting News via Getty
For her dad, she says, his heart attack was “very out of nowhere.”
“He was 33, an active player in shape. You don’t expect things like that to happen until it’s too late,” she says. “Through this program with Merck, Women Heart, we want to really spread awareness and encourage people to get to a doctor before it’s too late, learn about their cholesterol and the risks of heart attacks and strokes.”
Sierra emphasizes that she is “happy to be able to build out my dad’s legacy past just baseball.”
“I think it’s through just a few different attributes. His name has continued to carry on after 20 years, which is really cool to think about. His legacy is living every day with humility, kindness, and a positive outlook on life,” she tells PEOPLE.
“It’s something I try to carry with my family and me. Using this program to spread awareness, and it’s something he would’ve been really proud of. Using his story is a really amazing way to do it because he was such an amazing person.”
Read the original article on People