Sad Goodbye :*(

Just wanted to post a little note here about something.

I've been meaning to write up a little "How I did it" article to share some of the things I did last year to help raise money for HFC and just haven't got around to it. Well, It's getting to be that time again. I usually start around August 1st. I go to Sam's Club and buy a couple of boxes of candy bars and set them up at work with a sign saying they are for sale for $1.00 and the money goes to HFC. (I have also baked cookies, etc.) I then take the money earned and buy more boxes of candy and anything extra goes towards items for my silent auction at my ride and raffle prizes, etc.

Last year one of the things I did was have several pink hats made with the HFC logo embroidered on it. I bought them for a little over $5 each and sold them for $15 each, giving all the profit to HFC. The lady I bought them from was an ebay seller and I sent her the logo. She digitized it for me for free because she was also a breast cancer survivor, but was then battling ovarian cancer, which has a very high mortality rate. She sold A LOT of stuff to raise money for breast cancer and ovarian cancer and informed me of something that I didn't know.

While ovarian cancer risk is still very low for women, those who have had breast cancer are at a much greater risk of also developing ovarian cancer. In addition, ovarian cancer is very hard to detect in it's early stages, so many women do not find out they have it until it is already in the advanced stages and thus more difficult to treat, which is why the mortality rate is so high. She gave me several pamphlets about ovarian cancer with my order of hats and even told me she would save the HFC logo in her computer for this year in case I wanted to order more hats or something else and have it embroidered to raise money for this year.

Well, I saved her under my "favorite sellers" and then tried today to just go check out and see what types of things she had for sale this year. However, when I clicked on her store link, it said she was no longer an active user. I thought that was strange until I started seeing a scroll of feedback for her coming across the screen and it said that she had recently died this year in April from cancer.

Her name was Terry, and I don't know her last name, but I can tell you she was a very strong supporter of both breast and ovarian cancer research and she was a fighter up until the very end. May she continue to smile down upon us from heaven as the rest of us pick up our swords and fight in her place to win this war against cancer.

Andrea Fowler
afowler@trustok.com