SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – What did you do on your summer vacation? This common question teachers ask on the first day of the school year, but most likely the answers were not “swim across Lake Tahoe for the Michael J. Fox Foundation.”

Dave Shapiro of San Rafael, Calif., and a frequent South Lake Tahoe visitor, did just that on July 29, 2026.

As Shapiro approached his 67th birthday last year, he thought about how his father had died from Parkinson’s Disease at that same age about 30 years ago, and he wanted to swim across Lake Tahoe to honor and celebrate his dad. He had another goal: to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research in the world. Founded by the actor after he was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 29 in 1991.

“I was obsessed with doing this swim for a couple of years,” said Shapiro two days after the six-hour, 55-minute swim.

He started training (yes, he has swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco), gaining knowledge from other swimmers about proper training, and learning about fundraising from the Foundation, and marathon swimming at the lake from Sylvia Lacock, the founder of SwimTahoe.com.

Walking through a Ski Run Farmers Market last year, Shapiro stopped by a booth run by RestoreMyLake.org, a group whose mission is to retrieve and properly dispose of all submerged litter in Lake Tahoe, restoring the lake to its original splendor. He met Ryan Incerpi, the group’s director of programs and community engagement, and Founder Lindsay Kopf, and soon they offered to use their boat to assist Shapiro on his swim.

The new open-water swimmer and his wife visit Shapiro’s long-time buddy Tadd Perkins a few times a year, and swimming in the lake is normally part of the trip. Their friendship began when the two were freshmen in high school, and now that Perkins lives in South Lake Tahoe with his wife, the two couples visit together often. Perkins, a retired Seattle firefighter and current ski patroller at Sierra-at-Tahoe, was on the support boat last week as Shapiro swam.

The fundraiser swim was also personal for Perkins. His dad Bill, a jazz musician, also had Parkinson’s disease.

They boated over from the Tahoe Keys, and Shapiro got into the water at the Cave Rock boat ramp at 2:15 a.m. on the 29th, aiming to end at the Valhalla pier, a distance of nine miles. An early start is needed on the lake in order to successfully swim to the other side before winds pick up.

He swam with a buoy with a light inside and followed the lights in the support boat. Many long-distance swimmers have a physique different than the lanky Shapiro, but his training and passion got him across the lake in under seven hours.

About two hours into his swim, Shapiro said he got a bit sad as he realized the swim would end just a few hours later.

A celebration party of supporters organized by the Foundation greeted Shapiro as he exited the water near the pier.

Since the swim was a fundraiser for the Foundation, “Swim For Him,” the donation page is still open. Shapiro is closing in on his goal of $50,000 but needs a bit of help to get there. People can visit https://give.michaeljfox.org/fundraiser/7354598 and donate.

What did Shapiro do as he left South Lake Tahoe for a trip home to San Rafael? A quick swim in the lake, of course, but this time just a quick quarter-mile.

And he is already making plans to swim across the lake again in 2027, and will again do it under a full moon.

“I can’t think of a better place to swim than here,” Shapiro said of Tahoe.