Sylvia & Me
Sylvia & Me
Renée Brinkerhoff: Champion Valkyrie Rally Racer, Breaking Barriers, Fighting Child Trafficking
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At 64, Renée is taking a 1956 Porsche 356A to Antarctica to raise awareness about child trafficking. Talk about a road trip of a lifetime! Her goal is to have raced in all seven continents. Antarctica will be the final continent for Renée to complete that amazing goal.

Renée turned her hobby into Valkyrie Racing and then launched Project 356 World Rally Tour, raising awareness about child trafficking along with money to help fight it. She has worked with aid groups around the world including Kenya’s HAART Foundation in Kenya and The Exodus Road in Colorado.

And all of this started after raising her four children eight years ago.

Let’s combine the above with chance meetings, decisions that incorporate courage and a woman in her mid-fifties. After raising and homeschooling her four children, Renée remembered something that had been percolating in her head since she was 17 years old. 17 years old, her father and a VW Beetle. She figured it would be a one-time thing. What had been percolating? How about racing…Rally Car Racing to be more specific. And why not? The one thing that Renee could not fathom happening was to go to her death bed regretting that she had never tried.

Rally racing, one of the only woman Champion Rally Race Car Driver, working undercover with the FBI and advocating to stop child trafficking internationally and she’s 64.

That thought in her head led to helping so many.

This week I talk with Renée Brinkerhoff, a woman who didn’t have to take the chances that she does at 64. A woman who is more than a little inspiring.

A VW Beetle
The one liner in her head
A chance meeting with an undercover FBI agent
Her first race
Winning as a woman
Her Valkyrie racing team
Why she chose advocating against child trafficking
The treacherous terrain
Her undercover work
$1 million dollar goal
One more continent to conquer
Antarctica and what that means