The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
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Dexter Relay for Life takes gold
Event passes goal of $80,000 to fight cancer
By Sean Dalton, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: June 26, 2008
At the outset of the year the American Cancer Society set a goal of $80,000 for this year's Relay for Life in Dexter.
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The event greatly surpassed those expectations, raising $88,384, not including proceeds from concessions and other sources of income that hadn't yet been included in the tally as of Tuesday.
"We could go as high as $91,000, just halfway between where (the ACS) said we would end up and my personal goal," said organizer and Dexter Jazzercise team captain Juli Huddleston. She personally was hoping to reach $100,000.
Several important milestones were reached this year. 35 teams came out in support of finding a cure for cancer and those teams were built from 700 individual participants.
While the goal is funding a cure, the event also focuses on survivors, of which there were 56 this year participating in the survivor lap and survivor brunch on Saturday morning.
Later on in the evening 915 Luminaria lined the track on the Dexter Community Schools campus track honoring the memory of loved ones.
"We also reached all of our Mission Delivery and Advocacy Goals thanks to the great work done by Jennifer Porte and the team captains," online chairperson Jenny Davis. "We had 34 ACS Cancer Action Network members, 39 Picture a Cure forms, 31 Tell a Friend Callers and 30 Fight Back Pledges."
Online fundraising was the driving force behind many of the teams that placed in the top of the charts for funds raised.
Regina Lucas-Bell and Lori Sarns are co-captains of The Usual Suspects, which was the second most successful team when it came to bringing in dollars from supporters with $8,819 raised.
The "Casablanca" themed team is mostly made up of moms from Bates. In fact, the team was the Bates Parents last year, and they were a successful team then too, with enough money raised for third place.
"We just have a really good team," Lucas-Bell said.
Like many other teams, they held events and sales to raise funds, in addition to pledge-seeking.
"We had our carwash again this year and we did a yard sale and raised $1,200."
A couple of team members raised nearly $2,000 of their total amount raised.
One of the striking things about events such as Relay for Life is how the collection of people who attend makes the underlying statistics of cancer diagnosis and survival come alive, and The Usual Suspects were no exception.
"We had four of our team members who were diagnosed or are living with cancer," Lucas-Bell said. "They're all under or near the age of 40. That's a pretty staggering statistic (there are 45 people on her team).
While she has never been diagnosed herself, she shared that her father, Richard Lucas, died of lung cancer four weeks ago.
"Without Lori, I wouldn't have been able to do this," Lucas-Bell said. "We're a very dynamic duo."
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