HUMAN

Name: Davida Hanson

Age: 56

Residence: Unalakleet, Alaska

Occupation: Airline Customer Service Agent, Restaurant Owner, Hair Salon Owner

Years involved with the Iditarod: Most of my life

Iditarod Roles: Volunteer Support

Current Location: Unalakleet, Alaska

Date of Photo: March 13, 2022

Temperature: 68F Indoors/ 6F Outdoors

What, who or how and when did you first get involved with the Iditarod?

I got involved with Iditarod, I’m going to say quite a long time ago, being born and raised in Unalakleet, the Iditarod has always been here and my grandfather was a male runner. So, he mushed dogs. And so our family’s always been pretty involved with dog mushing. And so I’m here today and involved with Iditarod because it’s a awesome sport and it’s always fun to see the mushers come in. 

What is your Why? Why are you here TODAY and involved with the Iditarod?

We have our restaurant, when we get the Iditarod bikers and Iditarod walkers, we house them because of course they need a place to stay too. We have lodging through our business, and so we house the Iditarod Air Force, we house a lot of the volunteers and of course we get a lot of orders with our pizza place from all over the world. We get orders from all over the world, the furthest one we got was from New Zealand. We get pizza orders for the dog mushers and our pizza boxes are blank on top so we can write a note to the mushers from the person who’s ordering their food. And some of the messages are pretty interesting, but we make sure we get them on there for them and make sure the mushers get their pizzas when they arrive in Unalakleet. And we help in any way we can with the Iditarod race. 

Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences.

So one of my most memorable Iditarod experiences was one year, my daughter was here from Los Angeles and she wanted to host an “Iditarave” and we thought that was the craziest thing, in our restaurant of all places. And we told her she could. So she put out a tip jar at the restaurant for funds for her Iditarave and Lance Mackey, when he came in, went down to the restaurant to grab something to eat and he put money in her tip jar. So she can start her Iditarave.

What in life do you know for sure?

What I know in life for sure is things are never easy, but as long as you stay positive, you can make things happen