Residents will celebrate, remember and fight back this weekend
as the annual Relay for Life comes to town.
Residents will celebrate, remember and fight back this weekend as the annual Relay for Life comes to town.
The annual event, held at Christmas Hill Park, lasts 24 hours and raises awareness and funds for cancer. This year the event will take place from Saturday to Sunday.
“We have 52 teams signed up so far,” said Debbi Sanchez, the Relay for Life event chair woman who’s been involved with the event since 2003 as a volunteer.
Among those teams are businesses like Best Buy, organizations like Gilroy Rotary and survivors and supporters who will be walking around the ranch side of Christmas Hill Park to raise money for cancer research. Event organizers have set a $100,000 goal, a decrease from past years due to the relapsing economy yet plans are for an event bigger than ever.
“We’re going to blow this thing out,” said Mike Sanchez, the event co-chairman along with his wife. “We have six bands, a kid camp that’s going to last all day, movies after dark, a lot of ceremonies honoring our cancer survivors. Anything from face painting to food.”
A symbolic hair cutting will also take place on stage Saturday as six women who have let their hair grow will donate their strands to the organizations Locks of Love and Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths which provide real hair wigs to women with cancer. One of those women is Vanessa Reynaga who decided to participate with her co-workers Deanna Franklin and Tammy McCormick in hopes of helping cancer survivors.
“Cancer strikes everybody,” said Franklin who has been involved with Relay for Life for five years as a volunteer and team coordinator. “To get involved allows us to do something for people.”
For Reynaga, the motives were personal. “My mom is a breast cancer survivor so I was even more motivated,” she said.
Lori and Steve Jeske, participants for three years and part of the organizing board this year, got involved when the disease affected their family.
“My father in law died of pancreatic cancer,” said Lori. “We’re doing this so no one else has to go through what we did.”
Gloria MacVicar is another participant of the event who takes the matter to heart.
A three time cancer survivor diagnosed with breast, bone and brain cancer, she says her participation in the relay is the reason for her being alive.
“I’m clean of brain cancer,” told MacVicar. “The surgery was amazing and it couldn’t have happened five years ago. People are raising money for research and I’m here for that reason.”
A fashion show held two weeks ago in downtown Gilroy also organized by Debbi and Mike Sanchez collected $2100 which will be directed towards this weekend’s goal. In attendance was IBF Featherweight boxing champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero.
Relay for Life will be accepting team sign ups until the day of the event.
For more information on how to volunteer go to
