By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com
ROCKINGHAM — Callie Tucker, Deleah Smith, Renee Kifer and Karrington Tupper are doing just about anything they could to lure motorists along Highway 74 Business to their charity car wash.
Especially Deleah.
The four young ladies, along with Melanie Kifer, Heather Blaylock and Karen Tilley, opened up in the parking lot at Advance Auto Parts at 10 a.m. for the by-donation wash. The event will last as long as the weather holds out, said organizer Melanie Kifer, who works at CVS pharmacy in Rockingham.
Proceeds will benefit the 18th annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure run and walk scheduled for Oct. 4 at Marshall Park in Charlotte. Kifer said she began participating in cancer fundraisers last year after Courtney Landrum, of Buchanan, Va. — her best friend since sixth grade — began her second bout with cancer.
There were an estimated 28,000 people attending last year’s event, Kifer said.
“It was inspiring,” she said.
Cancer survivors spoke of their experiences on stage. One couple’s story stood out. The woman was going through her second fight against cancer. The two were laying in bed one night, reading, when the wife casually rubbed her hand across her husband’s chest. She felt something — and it was something other than a heartbeat.
Kifer said the wife insisted the husband get it checked out, and all too soon the couple learned the man had breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, “breast cancer is about 100 times less common among men than among women. For men, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000. The number of breast cancer cases in men relative to the population has been fairly stable over the last 30 years.”
ACS projects that about 2,360 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in men this year, and about 430 men this year will die from it.
“A lot of men don’t realize … that men develop breast cancer,” too, Kifer said.
Still, it’s rare. For women, the risk is much higher. The ACS predicts that in 2014 alone, about 232,670 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women and about 40,000 women will die from it.
For Kifer, however, it goes far beyond the statistics. It’s personal. She doesn’t want to see her best friend suffer.
Last year, Kifer and her Race for the Cure team — called Cop a Feel for Early Detection — raised slightly more than $1,000. This year, Kifer’s team has grown from five members to 25. She’s hopeful of raising much more than $1,000.
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