Give Hope

I remember when I first heard about St Jude Children's Research Hospital - I was in elementary school, and the Math-a-Thon for St Jude had been announced. You pledged to do a certain number of math problems, and family and friends would donate a certain amount of money for every math problem you completed (8-year-old me wants to know why they couldn't do a Write-a-Thon instead - I hate math). I remember watching the videos of children who were patients at St Jude and wanting to help them.

St Jude became a national project for ESA in 1972. St Jude is the largest treatment center for pediatric cancers, as well as one of the largest research facilities for childhood cancers.One of the great things about St Jude is that no child is ever turned away because of finances. If a child needs treatment for cancer, St Jude provides it for them.

In Fishers on Memorial Day, the Give Hope Ride benefiting St Jude takes place at Heritage Park. The ride originally started out of the home of John and Peg Wright in 2009, and has grown to almost 200 cyclists and over $12,000 raised for St Jude. It now takes place at Heritage Park in Fishers, instead of the Wrights' home.

This year, I joined the group of volunteers at the Give Hope Ride! I helped man the waiver table (very important when you've got a huge group of cyclists taking to the streets of Hamilton County) and helped cheer on the cyclists when they left Heritage Park and as they started to head back in.

What a good-looking group of volunteers!

This year had a record-setting group of cyclists leave from the park. There are four routes for the cyclists to take. The 9-mile Cruiser Ride leaves Heritage Park and goes through some subdivisions around Fishers - it's a good ride for families. There are then the Small, Medium, and Long Rides. The 24.1-mile Short Ride goes down by the Geist Reservoir and then heads back to the park. The 39.5-mile Medium Ride heads up into Noblesville with a stop at Forest Park. The last route - the 49-mile Long Ride - goes all the way up into Cicero. The exciting stop on that route was at Big Dog Smokehouse BBQ in Cicero - they opened up just for the Give Hope Riders to serve barbeque sliders! The Give Hope Ride also includes a kid's bike safety class.

Getting ready to take off!

Before they left Heritage Park, two local young adults who were St Jude kids spoke to the riders. One was a Northwestern University sophomore who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma as a kid. He took part in a research trial at St Jude that tested out a treatment that put him in remission with no side effects. That treatment is now the standard treatment for pediatric Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The second speaker, who particularly touched my heart, just graduated high school. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia at just 23 months old, after showing no symptoms except for a rash. After finding out from her pediatrician that her red blood count was at 87,000 (normal range is around 10,000), her family rushed her to St Jude, and she started chemo the next day. If her family had ignored her symptoms, she would have only had 6 months to live. 

Away they go!

St Jude saves lives. It was so touching to hear those stories from St Jude kids, and to see so many people out supporting the hospital and the lives it saves. I'm looking forward to volunteering at next year's Give Hope Ride!