Walking into Mountain Mike’s Pizza on a stormy night, customers are greeted with the smell of pizza and an array of yummy baked goods. Cupcakes, cookies and brownies along with other treats are up for purchase to raise money for Chico State’s Relay for Life team.
Relay for Life is a two-day, 24-hour walk fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Each participant brings a team so one member will be on the track at all times. This year’s walk will take place June 6–7, 2015.
Lori Adrian, the administrative support coordinator for Chico State’s political science department, has been a part of Chico State’s Relay for Life team for eight years. The team fundraises for nine months out of the year. This month’s fundraiser was hosted at Mountain Mike’s Pizza on Nov. 20 from 6–9 p.m.
“We fundraise all through the year — individually, as well as a group,” Adrian said. “This is a group fundraiser. We always try to get as much of the community involved so that they know about the relay and that it’s for American Cancer Society. All the fundraising throughout the year culminates on the 24-hour walk that we do.”
Chico State’s relay team name is Cats for a Cure. Over the years, they have done many different kinds of fundraisers: anything from raffles, chili cook-offs, to yard sales. For this month’s fundraiser, Mountain Mike’s Pizza will be donating 20 percent of all proceeds made in the three-hour window.
“It seems like on any given night, somebody comes for pizza,” Adrian said. “So it’s just a natural place to do it. This is our first time doing it at Mountain Mike’s.”
Along with pizza, Adrian and other team members put on a bake sale inside the restaurant. Their bake sales are popular, sometimes bringing in more money than the fundraiser.
“The bake sale part of it is just because we are fantastic bakers,” she said. “Sometimes we make more on the bake sale than we do on the fundraiser itself. If we don’t make $200 easily on our bake sale, we’re not doing well.”
Adrian, having lost loved ones to cancer before, said that being apart of a Relay for Life team is a great way to give back and help the fight against cancer.
“I feel like it’s something I can do,” she said. “It’s the one way I feel I can really give back and help with the fight.”
Cats for a Cure has been at Chico State for about 15 years. However, the team has no student members.
Adrian said this is because students do not want to participate because the event is in June and students have already made summer plans by then.
“It’s difficult right now to get students,” she said. “Right now we don’t have any, but there’s two different things. Number one: several years ago, we started having the relay in June instead of in April. With that, all the students say, ‘Well I can’t be at the relay so I don’t want to participate.'”
Adrian encourages students to join the Relay for Life team or create their own teams through Greek life or other organizations on campus.
“The other thing is that now Chico State has their own relay team,” she said. “I would think that all of the Greeks and different organizations could create a team and just raise funds. Those two things I think have diminished the number of students we have. I would love to get more students involved in it.”
Even if students cannot make it to the relay event in June, they can still participate with Cats for a Cure.
“Students are more than welcome and we would love to have them on our team even if they can’t make it to the relay,” Adrian said.
Taylor Sinclair can be reached at [email protected] or @TaySinclair17 on Twitter.
