Sophomore psychology major Anna Tobia began participating in Relay for Life as a freshman in high school and would visit her sister at Georgetown University every year to participate in the event. Unfortunately, because one out of every three people will hear the sentence, “You have cancer,” in their lifetime, Tobia’s reasons for attending soon changed after someone close to her had to hear those three words.
“My senior year, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer,” Tobia said. “It was hard to see someone close go through this horrible thing. I knew then that when I got to college, I had to get even more involved.”
Relay for Life is a volunteer-driven event held by communities across the globe and sponsored by the American Cancer Association. For the past seven years, Tech’s Relay has raised more than $950,000 for the American Cancer Society, not including the current fundraising year.
For the last two years, Tobia has been captain of the Relay For Rita team — a team named in memory of her grandmother, who lost her fight with cancer on Valentine’s Day 2009.
One of her largest responsibilities as team captain is fundraising. Last year, Tobia fundraised primarily through e-mails to friends and family, but decided she wanted to do something bigger this year.
“At a leadership conference for Relay, they were giving out T-shirts that said ‘WTF: Win the fight,’” Tobia said. “Later when I went to a Relay meeting at Tech I wore the shirt, and people asked if that was the shirt for the event this year. That’s when I got the idea.”
Tobia contacted the maker of the WTF shirts and placed a large order. Her team now sells the shirts for $10 each and has already sold enough to cover the cost of making the shirts, which puts them at over $200 pure profit from the shirts alone.
Relay For Rita is not the only group with an inventive method of fundraising. Sophomore communication major Chris Saccoccia is one of the team captains of Tequila Cancer, which sells shot glasses to raise money.
A version of this article appeared in the Mar 30 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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