The Impact of Teams - Share Your Story

Every step you take and dollar you raise brings us closer to a future without breast cancer. Because you’re taking those steps with a team, you’re multiplying your impact on the cause.

Whose Life Are You Running For? Please email us at info@komeneasternwashington.org to share your story. We want to share with the community why being a part of the Race isn’t just a life changing event, but a life saving one as well.

• What inspired you to join/form a team for the Komen Race for the Cure?
• Are you participating in honor of a loved one?
• Did you achieve a fundraising goal?
• In what ways has your team activated at the Race? (fundraising activities, special team t-shirts, contests)

  Registered Nurse Deb Cridlebaugh-Broyles and her Race for the Cure (TM) Team are a tough act to follow.  In the six year Cancer Care Northwest has run or walked the Eastern Washington Race for the Cure, participation keeps growing.  But in 2010's race, they may have outdone even themselves.

  "We came away with five awards," says Nurse Deb, "We were awarded the largest corporate fundraiser ($13,000), The Friends for the Cure, the most strollers (13), the "many and mighty" (311 competitors), and the most survivors: 72.  Cancer Care Northwest, and their team, PINK POWER, in fact, is one of few corporate teams that invites its patients to run along with its staff.

  And the recent survivor who raised a legendary $7,700 on her own last year?  She was on their team, too.

  So while Deb says she's honored and ecstatic to lead the Cancer Care Northwest team again, she's not sure there'll be a repeat.  She's set her team goal at 250 participants, and $10,000.

  "My motto this year is register, donate, participate, 'Go, Team, Pink Power!'  I'm kind of like maybe a cheerleader," Deb admits.  "I want to be an inspiration to our patients, because they are the ones who have inspired me, and made it easier for me when I had to face that diagnosis."

  After a mammogram with clear margins in 2008, Deb was diagnosed in spring 2009 with Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma (estrogen-progesterone negative...HER2 positive).  While it was caught at stage one, it's an aggressive form of breast cancer.  Deb had a mastectomy and a reconstruction, on October 28, and was back on the Komen course for 2009's Race for the Cure.

  "My hair was coming in...my daughter and her husband came up with my two granddaughters who were wearing pink ribbon tattoos for grandma on their cheeks as their mom pushed them in a stroller.

  Besides walking or running along with their patients and their families, Deb says another key to CCNW's successful team is the involvement of physicians and staff.  "They not only run it themselves, but they encourage participation."

  While Deb had always been a passionate supporter of cancer fundraising and research, participating in other races before Komen came to Spokane, she says she feels incredibly connected to this race.

  "Susan G. Komen was an awesome person, with an awesome sister.  We have come so far..Because of her, we can talk openly about breast cancer..we're bring awareness to the disease and new treatments; We're into early detection."

  And Deb has goals that go far beyond her award-winning team's participation and fundraising "My hope is that my sister, my daughter and my granddaughters will never hear the words: 'You have cancer.'"