Volunteers Talk About Why They Relay For Life

Kimberly Gay spoke for many when she said her reasons for attending the 2013 Brandon Relay For Life included a fervent wish to rid the world of cancer.

"We're here to support [the fight against] cancer, just like everybody else," Gay said, at the Limona Elementary School booth at the Brandon High School track. "My mom is going through it now so it's personal to me. I think of her when I'm here."

Gay, a teacher, said she also thinks about her mother-in-law, who died of cancer. The Relay, she added, "brings everybody together, makes you realize this is worth fighting for."

Thoughts for cancer survivors, along with survivors themselves, mark the annual Relay For Life, which this year was held April 12-13 in Brandon. Relays late last month were held at Riverview and Newsome high schools. Bloomingdale's Relay was last week and Relays at Armwood and Plant City high schools are scheduled for April 19-20.

Collectively, the six Relays in Eastern Hillsborough County collect hundreds of thousands of dollars for the American Cancer Society and its drive to aid research, awareness, prevention and a cure.

Limona teacher Claudia Gonzales said she first heard of the Relay For Life movement years ago, when her brother wheeled her mother on the track of an event in Arizona. Gonzales said her father died of cancer 12 years ago and her mother died of a stroke seven months later.

"I have never heard of Relay For Life before [my brother took my mother to the event in Arizona]," she said. "When I started at Limona they started at that time and I got a team and I've been doing it ever since."

Student Abby Stafford was at the Relay with her Brandon High School Student Government Association team. Stafford's father, Scott, a dentist, was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and has been cancer-free since 2001.

"I didn't really know what was going on when my dad got cancer," she said. "I didn't understand it completely. But now that I'm older, I do. I'm really glad he made it. It would have been really hard to grow up without my dad. He's a really important part of my life."

Scott Stafford, with his wife, Linda, also was at the 2013 Brandon Relay For Life.

"It's important for the people who are recently diagnosed, that they can realize there is support not only from the American Cancer Society but within the community as well," he said.

Isallys Quinones, a Brandon High junior, worked to fill luminaria bags with sand.

"Everybody has a background story," she said. "Everybody knows somebody who's had cancer. My grandmother survived cancer so it's pretty touching to me as well."

Jessica and Peter Sanders were in attendance with Hawthorn Village of Brandon. She works as an administrative assistant in the assisted-living facility; her husband works with medical records.

"We need to live in a world where there's both a cure and prevention and this is the way to do that," Jessica Sanders said, noting as well the Relay movement's mission to raise money for awareness and research. "If we knew what caused cancer we wouldn't have to work so hard on a cure."