Summit High School hosted the TEDx Bend conference on Saturday, drawing an audience of hundreds to hear from a lineup of speakers and musicians addressing “Leaps and Boundaries,” a theme meant capture the idea of overcoming real or imagined obstacles.

A spin-off of the TED organization — TED is an acronym for technology, entertainment and design — TEDx conferences are technically independent from the original organization, which has been staging talks around the world on what it calls “ideas worth spreading” since 1984. The local organizers of TEDx Bend follow the format of the larger organization and keep the pace moving, with no single presenter going longer than 18 minutes.

Saturday’s event was the second year in a row Bend has hosted a TEDx event. A sampling of the stories shared by the presenters follows:

Chad Russell

Bend native Chad Russell addressed his experiences in three tours in Iraq, and the difficulty of readjusting to life back home.

Russell recalled how seeing the 9/11 attacks as a sophomore at Mountain View High School inspired a desire to serve his country.

By 2004 he was a Marine, patrolling alleys in Falujah he said reminded him of the alley outside Thump Coffee aside from the hostile fire and occasional rocket attack, and on subsequent tours, part of a sniper unit.

Over time, Russell realized he wasn’t fully prepared to digest the process of returning from a war zone.

“When you’re an 18-, 19-year-old kid and you have all these experiences and responsibilities, you feel like you’re 10 feet tall and bulletproof,” Russell said. “I didn’t realize how hard it would be for me coming home.”

Back in Bend, Russell recalled going out to eat at Red Robin with a friend. Some nearby diners were having a birthday party, and as they popped balloons, Russell began tensing up. Even though he knew the balloons were not gunfire, he said he found himself backing against the wall to scan the room and his heart rate rising.

“I was looking for a threat that wasn’t there,” he said. “It really made me kinda realize I had brought some of this home with me.”

Russell said his readjustment to civilian life has been filled with stops and starts, “failing forward” as he’s come to call the process.

Caitlin Crosby

Growing up with both parents deeply involved in Hollywood, Caitlin Crosby found herself troubled by how the industry’s focus on physical perfection affected regular people. Even as she found herself headed in to the family business as an actor and musician, she picked up a side project, photographing thousands of people with signs highlighting their imperfections — “my acne is sexy,” or, “flat chests are fabulous.”

Somewhere along the way, she happened across an old hotel key. Intrigued by the key’s imperfection and uniqueness, she took to wearing it around her neck as a pendant.

Crosby eventually wandered in to a locksmith and asked about engraving the key with an inspiring message. She ended up picking up a full sack of old keys, and started another side project selling the inspirational key jewelry alongside her CDs at shows. The keys soon outsold the CDs, and Crosby found herself struggling to keep up with demand.

While walking along Hollywood Boulevard, Crosby spotted a couple with a sign of their own that caught her eye — “Ugly, Broke and Hungry,” the sign read. Crosby chatted with the couple briefly, then invited them to join her for dinner. Over dinner, she noticed the woman’s necklace, and upon learning she’d made it herself, Crosby asked the homeless couple to become her business partners.

In several furtive transactions she imagines must have looked like drug deals, Crosby and the couple traded bags of keys and tools and cash on the street, until eventually, the couple had earned enough money to leave the streets for good. Today, 10 people work full time for what Crosby calls “The Giving Keys.”

Crosby said her chance meeting with the homeless couple with the sign is a constant reminder that it doesn’t take a big plan or a lot of resources to make a profound difference in the world.

“Keep your eyes open, there are locks all around you, maybe you hold the key to someone else’s freedom,” she said.

Russell Reddenbaugh

Russell Reddenbaugh divides his life in to two unequal halves — a youth he openly regards as “mediocre,” and everything else that’s happened since an accident that nearly killed him as a teenager.

In 1962, Reddenbaugh was 16 when a homemade toy rocket blew up in his hands outside his home near Salt Lake City. By good fortune, the former Army nurse who lived next door was outside hanging up her laundry — because her dryer had broken — and was able to keep Reddenbaugh from bleeding to death.

The explosion had taken off half of his fingers and blinded him in one eye. Months later, complications from his injuries cost him the sight in his remaining eye. On the day he learned he’d be blind for life, Reddenbaugh said he made a declaration to himself that he would “live in the sighted world and do sighted things,” and started working to improve himself for the first time in his life.

Four years later, having graduated at the top of his class at the University of Utah, Reddenbaugh applied to the top MBA schools in the country. Harvard and Stanford turned him down, claiming, he said, there was no way a blind student could handle their programs.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania eventually accepted him, and though he again graduated near the top of his class, his job search was largely unsuccessful. A small financial firm in Philadelphia finally offered him a position as a securities analyst — with the condition he pay for a sighted assistant out of his own pocket — and over the next two decades, he rose to be a partner in a firm that eventually sold for $6 billion.

Reddenbaugh served as a commissioner on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and found further financial success as an investor, then took on his most unlikely challenge around his 50th birthday, training in the martial art of jujitsu. Over the next 10 years, Reddenbaugh earned his black belt and won three world championships in his age class, fighting against fully sighted men with all of their fingers intact.

Looking over the nearly 50 years since the accident that nearly killed him, Reddenbaugh said he’s learned that opportunities are everywhere for those who are prepared to seize them,

“Opportunities favor those who are prepared in mind and body,” he said.