Area women walk for cancer

Anyone walking or driving through the Seattle metropolitan area this past weekend might have spied some colorful birds from Wrangell.

The “Blue-Footed Boobies” Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure team recently returned to Wrangell after completing a sixty-mile three-day walk through Seattle and environs. The four members of the team, which picked up a spare member from Juneau, raised more than $15,000 in sponsorships for the event, which raises funds for the Susan G. Komen breast cancer research fund.

The group’s colorful name came from event’s tradition of working the slang word for breasts into the team name.

While Wrangellites Megan Clark, Tyla Nelson, Beth Heller, Beth Comstock, ex-Wrangellite Erin Melton Anderson of Heppner, Ore., and Jennifer Thorne, of Juneau, haven’t survived cancer themselves, they take the issue seriously.

For Comstock, the reason for participation was simple.

“Cause it had to be done,” she said. “Everyone deserves a lifetime.”

Comstock became involved two years ago for an intimate reason she is hesitant to disclose. She participated in walks in Seattle in June 2012, and June and September this year, and said the events were a success.

“Of course it was a success,” she said. “We had 2,000 people in one place united for a single cause.”

The group sells bagels downtown on the first Saturday of every month to raise funds for participation. Each member must raise a minimum of $2,300 to participate in the walk.

Seattle’s event, one of six walks held throughout the country, raised about $2.9 million, Comstock said.

Since starting in 1982, the Komen foundation has raised more than $2 billion for breast-cancer research. The organization started in 1982 and is named for a woman who died of the disease.