Fighting childhood cancers, one mile at a time
Dunwoody resident Sherie Green participated in her first 28.3-mile CureSearch Ultimate Hike to raise money for pediatric cancer research in 2019. For Green, it was personal. Her 7-year-old niece, Noya Roizman-Mor, died of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) , an aggressive childhood cancerous tumor that forms in the brain stem. “It’s the same type that killed Neil Armstrong’s daughter 60 years ago,” she says. “Tragically, there has been little research or success in finding a cure since then.”
The Ultimate Hike is the only national hiking fundraiser dedicated to fighting children’s cancer. Atlanta participants normally train together on Kennesaw Mountain because the terrain is similar to the Foothills Trail in South Carolina where the event takes place.
But 2020 is far from normal. This year, in addition to their captain and coach, who are both medical professionals at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, hikers are training solo for the September 26 event (originally scheduled for April, it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Each hiker is asked to raise $2,500, and over the last 10 years, CureSearch has raised $6.5 million. Funding goes to both new, outof- the-box research initiatives and long-running research with proven success. “Many of us hike in memory of a child who has died, and at the end of the race there are pictures of all the children who are being remembered,” Green says. “It was both moving and heart breaking to find Noya’s photo among the faces of far too many victims.”
For more information visit curesearch.org.
