Hey friends and family,

I encourage you to join me in supporting The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) by making a donation to my fundraising campaign. By donating to LLS, you support the many facets of LLS’s mission work from investing in groundbreaking research, providing education and support to patients, and advocating at the state and federal level for legislation to help those living with cancer. My appreciation for your support cannot be overstated — each and every dollar donated to LLS brings us closer to our goal to end blood cancer and makes an impact on cancer patients and their families.

For me, this event and fundraiser holds a special place in my heart. In seventh grade, I met my favorite teacher and my role model, Mr. Rush. Mr. Rush was kind, outgoing, funny, involved, and all-around what I aspired to be. He embodied his motto, “Be good humans.” At the end of every class, he said this phrase. After taking his class in seventh grade, I joined my school’s water polo team where I got to be coached by him. It was here where I really started to see his “be good humans” nature come out. He would always play everybody, emphasize sportsmanship, and encourage us not to give up on the difficult sport of water polo. Like how he ended every class, he ended every practice by saying “Be good humans.” Nothing can last forever though, and unfortunately, Mr. Rush was diagnosed with brain cancer during the middle of my 8th-grade year. Our whole campus was deathly silent. Mr. Rush went through chemotherapy and missed my grade’s graduation because he was too weak to be able to make it. It was heartbreaking to see my role model be beaten to the ground by cancer. Eventually, it seemed like it was getting better and Mr. Rush came back to school next year to take up his duty as principal once again, however, this was just a strong front he put on. On December 28, 2017, Scott Charles Rush passed away due to brain cancer. It was impossible for me to believe that someone so strong, so caring, and so kind could be a victim of something so evil, like cancer. When thinking back on him and how I could honor him one phrase stuck out to me, “Be Good Humans.” To pursue being a good human, I have decided to do my best to end cancers of all kinds.

I decided to help LLS as they are committed to doing more for blood cancer patients and families than any organization in the world. LLS’s signature fundraising campaigns drive critical support for its mission, including a nearly $1.3 billion investment in cutting edge cancer research worldwide since it was founded in 1949. Since the 1960s, survival rates for many blood cancer patients have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled.

Every facet of LLS’s mission – research, education and support, and policy and advocacy – work in harmony to put blood cancer patients and their families first. LLS has helped millions impacted by cancer throughout its more than 70-year history, even funding breakthrough blood cancer research to advance lifesaving treatments and cures that is now helping patients with other cancers and diseases. That is why at LLS we say that beating cancer is in our blood.

Please visit my website as often as you can and share it with everyone you know who would also like to join us in the fight against cancer. Together, we have the power, the passion and the resolve to achieve a world without blood cancer. All donations are tax-deductible.

I sincerely thank you all for your support!

For more information about LLS, please visit lls.org