Runners, walkers raise money for McHenry County-area breast cancer patients

WOODSTOCK – When Maura Kirchner found out she had breast cancer, she focused on putting together a plan and getting through it.

The Holiday Hills resident had experienced cancer before when her husband, Bill, had been diagnosed and successfully treated for colon cancer, so she knew what to expect and how to prepare for the logistics.

But the diagnosis, which came about two months ago, was still a shock.

“There’s no cancer in my family,” she said. “I was very surprised at the diagnosis, but the community support, the family support, the friend support, that’s been amazing.”

Kirchner, who is about halfway through chemotherapy and still needs to undergo surgery, was the top fundraiser for the Care 4 Breast Cancer 5K Run/Walk, raising nearly $4,000 for the Family Health Partnership Clinic’s breast cancer fund.

The Crystal Lake-based nonprofit had raised $136,102 as of Sunday afternoon, but donations are still coming in, according to the event’s website.

The goal is to raise $150,000 – a number that has climbed each of the 15 years the event has been held – to provide screenings and mammograms for local uninsured patients as well as educational programs, events director Liz Annetti said.

It was the local aspect that appealed to Kirchner.

She had been asked by Star 105.5 radio host Joe Cicero – whom she met because one of her granddaughters is a member of the Lemonade Brigade, a group of kids who have lemonade stands to raise money for local families – if he could name his fundraising team for the event after her.

Kirchner had never heard of the event, so she looked it up.

“I really liked that it’s not something where the money goes to research and awareness,” she said. “I liked that the money goes to women and their families that need help, local women that need help with their treatment. I like that it goes to patients.”

Annetti thinks that’s the reason the event has grown so much to 2,000 runners and walkers this year from 100 at its first event 15 years ago.

Some wearing costumes and most decked out in pink, those runners and walkers followed a 3.1-mile loop through the Sonata and Sweetwater subdivisions starting and ending at Woodstock North High School.

Among them were dental hygienist Jodi Gibson, who talked a group of about 10 of her coworkers and their family members into participating this year. Some of them had done the event previously, but the dental office, City Square Dental of Woodstock, had never created its own team.

Marian Central Catholic High School juniors Faelan O’Shaughnessy of Crystal Lake and Kaylie Baader of McHenry turned out with their tennis team, using the race as a bonding activity. They plan on being back next year – running the whole way.

Lindsey Williams had discovered the event four years ago when she moved into one of the subdivision the race travels through and made it a point to participate each of the next three years. She and Missy Weir, both of Woodstock and on the Fire Families For a Cure team, walked with their boys.

“You can run for 20-30 minutes and see what they go through all the time whether they’re sick, or throwing up, or going through chemo,” Weir said. “It gets you through it. That’s what we told our boys: ‘If you’re tired, just think of your aunt when she’s been through all this stuff and she’s sick and had surgeries. That’s why you’re doing it.’ It’s pushes you through.”