Walking a marathon and a half by oneself isn’t exactly desirable. When Jeff Rollosson Halbhuber learned his wife Catherine would be stuck in this position, he decided to change it.
“I thought about my wife out there doing all those 40 miles alone, and that would just stink,” Jeff said.
Catherine and Jeff, both Sammamish residents, will walk together Sept. 12-14 in the Seattle Breast Cancer 3-Day organized by Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The annual event is held in 14 cities nationwide.
“The purpose is to raise breast cancer awareness by having these walks and also to raise funding for education, for research, basically to find a cure,” said Catherine, a technical writer.
Both of Catherine’s grandmothers had cancer, one was a breast cancer survivor. An aunt and a cousin also suffered from different forms of cancer. Her family’s experience with the disease motivated her to walk.
“With all of the history in my family, it’s kind of like I’m looking forward to the future,” she said. “I have a 14-year-old daughter, and I’m looking at her going, ‘I don’t want her to have to go through what I’ve seen my (family and) friends go through.’”
As participants in the 3-Day, Jeff and Catherine must walk about 20 miles each day, with food, tents and shower facilities to keep them well-fed and well-rested along the way.
The 2008 walk will be Catherine’s second 60-mile adventure. She and her best friend from high school, Liane Sperlich, marched through it before and were going to do it together again, but Sperlich recently found out she would only be able to attend the whole event because of a scheduling conflict.
“It would have left me high and dry for the rest of the walk, and my husband said, ‘Well, if you don’t want to walk alone, then I could join,’” Catherine said.
Now Jeff has two months to not only prepare for a 60-mile hike, but also to raise the minimum requirement of $2,200. A fundraising tactic that succeeded for Catherine was to lay out a table’s worth of baked goods free for donors at her office. A piggy bank accompanied the desserts, nicknamed “The Breast Cancer Pig.”
“It sits out there with a little sign that says, ‘Feed the pig to fight breast cancer,’” Catherine said.
Jeff and Catherine plan to use the same method at Jeff’s office, but they are still concerned about meeting the requirement.
“The real worry is that, with my husband getting started this late, it’s like ‘OK, if we don’t raise it, I guess we have some money we can take from savings,’” Catherine said.
But a potential financial burden won’t prevent them from completing the walk. Catherine, with her family’s extensive history with the disease, said her fear of the illness drives her to help find a cure.
“It’s scary to think about how these people are my age, and they’re treated for it and they’re dying from it,” Catherine said. “You have to do something, you can’t just sit.”
To learn more or to help the Halbhubers raise money for their walk, visit http://08.the3day.org/site/jeff_rh.
Brittney Wong can be reached at (425) 391-0363 est. 4052 or at bwong@reporternewspapers.com
