What counts: Relay for Life Snoqualmie Valley is bigger than ?a numbers game

Published 12:49 pm Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Numbers are important in the Relay for Life Snoqualmie Valley, held over the weekend. The 14th annual fundraiser featured 43 teams, and six of them were all-youth teams. More than 300 people participated in teams ranging in size from two to 20-plus. The event raised $62,000 and counting.

Yet for the people who actually walked in the 18-hour marathon event, it’s not about numbers at all.

For David and Paula Fielder, walking in their first Relay in their first year in North Bend, it’s about family. Paula’s brother, a red-haired firefighter who inspired the team name, Team Fireball, has been fighting two forms of cancer since the fall. And in the last two weeks, too late to get her name added to the team’s T-shirts, Paula’s sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since she wasn’t on the T-shirt, Paula wore a feather boa — pink for breast cancer awareness — in her honor.

Just a team of two, the couple was already planning to expand their presence in the 2016 Relay, recruiting friends from their motorcycle club.

It’s also about friends, like Dyn-o-Mites team founders Sharon Posey and Sharon Larson, who both lost their battles with cancer this year. Relay chairperson Bev Jorgensen, during the opening ceremony, tearfully told the audience that she knew “the Sharons are watching us… and they’re probably wondering, why aren’t we doing more?”

When a breeze knocked over part of the Sharons’ memorial display, Walt Korcz, a committee member and friend of Posey, quickly righted it, then knelt on the grass holding it, head bowed, for the rest of the ceremony.

Relay was packed with such quiet moments. Patty Salgado, a member  of the Whiteside Warriors Relay team, was taking her place with the one-year-or-less cancer survivors before the first lap, and she had to pause when a volunteer offered her a medal. It was a survivor’s medal, for her triumph over a December cancer diagnosis. Quietly, the took the medal, read it, then slipped the ribbon over her head.

The event was hardly somber, though. Jorgensen called Relay “the biggest slumber party of the year,” and marveled at how it just made things happen.

Even the weather, overcast and cooler than it had been in the past few weeks, changed.

“There will probably be no overheating this year — thank goodness,” she told the cheering audience. “We got the dunk tank, we got the misters, and we got the clouds.”

Relay for Life Chairperson Bev Jorgensen speaks during the opening ceremony.

Carrying a banner as big as themselves, the youth team Cancer Kickers began their first lap. They were one of six youth teams participating in this year’s event. Chairperson Bev Jorgensen said organizers had made a special effort to get young teams involved, because “youth bring energy, and youth bring spirit.”

Kate Gotts, a member of Team Face (Fighting Against Cancer Every day), wears her Relay face at the start of the event. She is only 11, but already a regular member of Team Face, which walks every year in the event.

Walt Korcz bows his head during a tribute to Relay regulars “the Sharons,” who both died this year.

Words and pictures convey only a small piece of what these luminaria, represent. They are lit in the evening during Relay, in honor of those who fought, or are still fighting cancer.

David and Paula Fielder look at some of the luminaria lined up along the track as they begin their second lap, as Team Fireball.

Patty Salgado is offered her first survivor’s medal, as she lines up for the first lap of the Relay for Life Snoqualmie Valley, held last Saturday and Sunday at Torguson Park in North Bend.

Relay team members strut their stuff at Torguson Park in North Bend.

Mom and daughter enjoy Zumba together. This and following photos, courtesy of Mary Miller.

A group of youth dances for Saturday night’s Relay for Life talent show.

Lighting the luminaria is always a special moment at the Relay for Life.