ShawneeDispatch.com

Susan Breece's desk has become one of the most popular in the office.

Each day, several of the Olathe resident's 600 co-workers at Gear For Sports in Lenexa follow paper paw prints to her desk, which is stocked with candy and a cooler full of soda. The company has plenty of vending machines, but what brings these employees out of their departments and across the large building to Breece's desk is the knowledge that a large portion of the 50 cents they'll pay for their pop will go to the Shawnee/Lenexa Relay For Life, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

Breece spends some time each week seeking out the best deals on soda and other treats, and then keeping track of the surplus funds that she'll be able to donate to the company's four teams for this year's relay, which will take place June 27 at Shawnee's Swarner Park. After losing her college roommate to ovarian cancer last year, Breece said she felt it was time to step up and do something in the fight against cancer.

"It's fun, because people just love doing it," Breece said. "I have one lady who comes and spends 50 cents every day, and not because she drinks pop."

Breece sees her vending duties as even more important than simply writing out a check for the relay; this draws people in, she said, getting them more interested and invested in the event. For example, she's beginning to receive anonymous donations to further help in her efforts.

"I'll come in one morning, and there'll be a 12-pack of soda sitting here," she said.

Embracing the effort

Breece is just one of the employees who is guaranteeing this year's Shawnee/Lenexa relay will be bigger than ever. Over the past three weeks, Gear's employees have embraced the effort to raise funds for the fight against cancer, thanks in large part to the main relay team organizer for Gear, Lori Dunn of Basehor.

Dunn had participated in the Maryville, Mo., relay for six years when she worked at the Gear facility in Bedford, Iowa. One of her co-workers there had survived melanoma and got much of the company involved in the relay. Then, after nearly 15 years in remission, the cancer came back. Dunn says her former co-worker is still fighting the disease to become a two-time survivor, but the return of the cancer underscored the importance of the relay for Dunn.

Dunn was transferred to the Lenexa facility a year and a half ago, and about a month ago, the Lenexa employees received a request for help from the Chillicothe, Mo., Gear facility, a much smaller location that was participating in its own relay.

Knowing how important the relay was, Dunn began looking for a local relay Lenexa employees could participate in and soon got all of her co-workers involved. Believing the facility could gather at least four teams, she enlisted the help of Lisa Patel of Lenexa, Mary Mahoney of Overland Park, and Lori Seeling of Kansas City, Mo., as additional team leaders.

The teams are identified by four different letters: H, O, P and E. Dunn said they decided on the word because "hope" is so often used during the relay.

Everyone at the company could tell their own story of a brush with cancer. Mahoney lost her father to melanoma when he was just 52. Seeling just recently lost an aunt to breast cancer on the anniversary of her mother's death from the same disease; she has purchased 10 luminaries to in honor of various friends and family members who have battled cancer.

"I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone here whose life hasn't been touched by cancer," she said.

Fundraising galore

About 60 people have signed on to be a team, but many others have signed up to come to the relay to participate in fundraising games and activities, and countless others have taken part in the various events.

Team leaders and employees have organized various ways of raising funds in addition to the soda and other goodies, like ice cream, always sold at 2 p.m. each day.

"We've become like the ice cream Good Humor girls," Seeling said. "People can't wait; they come out of the woodwork."

Each week, they've planned a different main fundraiser. They've held a bake sale and had a jeans week, where employees paid $5 tickets to wear jeans to work for a day. They also have sold "stars and moons," paper certificates recognizing an employee's donation, and luminaria bags to be lit at the relay.

This week's fundraiser is a special version of the company's frequent dock sales, in which they open their doors to sell surplus apparel - overruns or slightly discolored items - in the Gear, Champion and Under Armour lines, with most items less than $10.

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the relay.

Money received from all of the fundraising methods and events is split four ways for each of the teams, and then Gear matches the per-team funds for the Chillicothe facility's relay team.

Dunn said she is one of the few at the Lenexa facility who had participated in or even heard of the Relay For Life before, but she hopes participation will be contagious. Though they've been raising funds for just three weeks, the team leaders already have raised more than $5,500.

"We found out within a month of the relay, and we're just throwing together everything we can and doing everything we can in this month, and it's been very successful," Dunn said. "But once we go and we know we'll want to do it again next year, we'll have a whole year to do fundraising, and we hope we can really raise some more money and awareness."

The three-day Gear dock sale begins today at the receiving dock of the Gear facility, 9700 Commerce Parkway in Lenexa, just east of Interstate 435 and 95th Street. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today and Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday.

For more information about the Shawnee/Lenexa relay, visit events.cancer.org/rflshawneeandlenexaks.