Great Strides walks help fund research to find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis. Now in their 15th year, Great Strides walks are held at over 320 sites throughout the country. Collectively, these walks and other related events raise over 19 million dollars a year, including $191,000 at the Seattle site and $80,000 for the Tacoma site. Robert had the honor of being the 2003 Great Strides Committee Chairman for the Seattle event, his fourth year in a row. Our team, Tori's Troopers, raised $10,241 in 2003, our personal best. A big thanks to all those who contributed! An especially big thanks to Mrs. Davis and her 5th/6th grade class for raising over $3,000 for CF research for their classmate Tori. Click here for their story. If you'd like info on CF and our fundraising efforts, visit our Great Strides Info page. For photos of the Maxwell family and their CF team Gidget's Group, click here.
Tori's Troopers World Tour 2003
The World Tour concept was started last year because we had some free time on our hands last Spring. This year it turned into more of an obsession. The idea was to participate in as many Great Strides-type CF events without vaporizing our checking account. We did six events in 2002 without much of a strategy, but with ample planning time for 2003, we squeezed in nine events in 10 weekends between April 19 and June 21. We attended a tenth event, Kaylee's Car Wash, but we felt we couldn't count it as a truly separate stop since all we did was watch the truck get washed and buy some donuts.
While we don't actively seek donations outside of the Seattle walk, we encourage every Trooper to participate wherever they can, and we like to be there when they do. Members of the Troopers turned in their donations at these other events and we also turned in our post-Seattle stragglers in Olympia. Plus, there's always great food at these events, so we couldn't go wrong!
For better or worse, we couldn't do all the CF events. The weekend of May 9-11 had no less than four - The Tacoma Tennis Auction Ball, the Lynden Bike-a-thon, the Poulsbo Great Strides and the Yakima Great Strides. With only so many CF Foundation staff to go around, we helped them out by providing event support for the inaugural Yakima walk.
Click on the photos below for recaps of our 2003 World Tour!
Thank you CF Foundation and Seattle Walk Committee!
We cannot say enough about the staff at the Seattle CF Foundation office - they are the best! None of this could happen without their hard work and dedication, and we are truly grateful to have people like Allison Thrasher, Joy Fischer, Dottie Moore and the rest of the staff around to help kids like Tori beat Cystic Fibrosis.
Even though the walk committee may think its biggest accomplishment was eating pizza, it's been great getting such an enthusiastic group together and making these events better each year.
