Doug Ruch knows he may soon die. Here's why he's feeling good

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Doug Ruch, 55, with a graying beard and breathless positive energy, knows two things for certain:

One: He’s going to die — and not later, but sooner.

In January, Ruch was gobsmacked to be diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer and told that, without the kind of aggressive chemotherapy and other treatments that might extend his life by a few months, it was likely that he would die within the next year or 18 months.

“When you get news like that,” Ruch said Monday, “you’re like, ‘Whoa. So, OK, what have I done in my life?’”

Two: Knowing that death was not far off — and convinced that his spirit or essence will move on to a new reality, whether its heaven or reincarnation or something unknown — Ruch felt he may as well go out the way he wants.

Which is why on Monday, the San Antonio resident — who in the days after his diagnosis was struck by the realization that he had actually done very little in his life to help others — was in Kansas City, excited to volunteer Tuesday morning at The Farmer’s House, a nonprofit in Weston, Missouri, where children with developmental disabilities build life skills on a working farm.

The stop in Missouri is part Ruch’s self-created “Dying to Serve Tour” — with Missouri as the 21st state in his own solo, on-the-road, end-of-life crusade to work as a volunteer in all 50 states.

Dying to Serve

Like an existentialist Johnny Appleseed, he has been spreading seeds of inspiration as he goes: a youth center in Utah, the food bank in Wichita an adult community center in Oregon. Last week, he was in Nebraska. After Missouri, he’ll be in Iowa at a refugee and immigration center in Cedar Rapids.

Questions of meaning follow him: Ruch, who worked as a salesman in the solar industry, is single following a divorce. Still, if he is in his last months, why not spend that time with family or friends?

“That’s a great question,” Ruch said Monday from his Kansas City hotel. “Let me give you the answer. Because I’ve done that my whole life. I’ve spent lots and lots of time with friends and family.

“But you know what I haven’t done? I haven’t given back. So that’s why I decided to do this. I decided that my time could be better spent giving back to the world before I go.”

It’s not as if Ruch is trying to ease any guilt or make up for past sins, he said. “I’m not a criminal. I’ve probably had a traffic ticket in 20 years. . . .I’m sure a lot of people think that I’m trying to buy my way into heaven by doing good, now, at the end of my life. But that’s not the case at all.”

The case, he said, is that he was just busy, working. “I didn’t take the time to volunteer. I didn’t take the time to give back.”

Cancer diagnosis

Ruch had battled and beat back an earlier prostate cancer diagnosis years ago. When it recurred, returning with a vengeance, he said, he went home. “I mourned for a few days. I thought about my life.”

His thought ventured to the recent North Carolina hurricane victims and the victims of the wild fires in California.

“I just started thinking about all these people suffering in the world,” he said, “And then I was like, well, maybe I could go help them. Then I was like well, if I’m going to go to North Carolina and California, there’s so much of the country I haven’t seen.

“If I only have 12 to 18 months left, maybe I could go and help them all. The idea popped into my head. I was just like, I have to do this. And not only do I have to do it, I have to complete it.”

Those who know Ruch were supportive.

“By the doctor’s prognosis, he going to be dead in 12 months,” said Eddie Gallagher of Maryland, a friend for 30 years. “He’s like, ‘If I’m going to die, I’m going to go out with a bang. And I’m going to go out and help people and do what what I can.’”

So Ruch, who worked in marketing, created his own webpage and social media on Threads and Instagram. He took off on his own in his 2017 Chevrolet Malibu with 141,000 miles on it, knowing it probably wouldn’t make it. In Boise, Idaho, it started running rough. A GoFundMe site to support his trip has so far raised just over $75,000. Donations recently allowed him to recently buy a new, 2025 Chevy SUV, discounted by a dealer who believed in his mission.

In a recent post, Burch admitted to exhaustion. He is ill. He takes no medicines for this cancer, because he has decided that living a few more months, but miserable from the treatment, is not worth the extra time.

“He has good days and bad days where he, you know, can’t get up and he feels terrible,” Gallagher, his friend, said.

On Threads, Ruch recently posted:

“I always try and put on a brave face. Here’s what’s happening behind it…

“I’m anxious, scared, lonely, and isolated. I have chosen to do this Dying to Serve volunteer tour alone, but it’s not easy. I don’t want to be famous so all the media attention is growing increasingly burdensome. Every ache and/or pain triggers dreadful thoughts of impending doom.”

But what Ruch also says is that that this trip has given his life, and the end of this life, greater meaning than he ever expected. Although there are days he tires, ‘they’re not on volunteer days. Every single one so far, I wake up and I just have this special energy.”

The people he’s met, and the circumstances he’s witnessed, have been unforgettable.

“I’ve done soup kitchens and food pantries and food banks and homeless shelters and senior centers and youth centers,” Ruch said. “And I’ve just seen so much suffering, and so many people in need. And with the way things are in the country right now, you know, it’s like these people are being forgotten.

“I’ve been in food banks and pantries where they’re losing their federal funding. And it’s like, ‘What do we do?’ They still have the same number of clients. But now they don’t have the same amount of money. And so I think that’s the biggest epiphany driving me forward. There’s huge need and I have to try to help.”

Who is Doug Ruch?

Friends, such as Quan Khuu, of San Francisco, who has known Rush for more than a decade, believe the tour is therapy of its own, generating what both he and Ruch called “happy hormones.”

“I think he (Ruch) has always been a happy-go-lucky type of guy,” Khuu said. “Even with his cancer, he is upbeat. I teach my kids that state of mind is so important. He just has that good state of mind. People who have this type of cancer, who give up and stay home, they die earlier than people who stay busy.”

And if what Ruch is doing inspires others, he said, that’s all for the better. Even if they volunteer only a few hours each month.

“These organization rely on volunteers,” he said. If, he said, there is money left over from the GoFundMe account, he plans to put it toward a nonprofit that he hopes to create, and will exist after he dies, dedicated to promoting what he calls “micro volunteering.” He defines it as volunteering only a few hours each month. Because a few hours is better than none. And a few hours makes a difference, as he now knows.

Asked how he hoped people would think of him following his crusade, what epitaph might be written, Ruch said it’s not something he’s thought about.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’m fine. Just throw me in an oven and throw the ashes in the trunk of a car. I don’t care.

“But I would love for my legacy to be somebody who did something selfless toward the end of his life, and it inspired and encouraged others to want to give back to these amazing organizations. If I can do that, then that’s all the legacy I need.”