Miles of Hope Community Walk for Breast Cancer
Breast Cancer is diagnosed every 29 seconds around the world.
There’s nothing like being together to honor friends, family, and all those who have been affected by breast cancer in the 19th annual Miles of Hope Community Walk, Run, Bike event at James Baird State Park.
During the event, there are raffles and merchandise for sale to rep that breast cancer pink for the whole month of October.
In addition to the in-person community walk, there is a virtual event going on throughout all of October.
According to Pari Forood, Executive Director of Miles of Hope, “During the pandemic, the virtual walk was so popular we decided to make it an ongoing event because the whole month of October is breast cancer awareness.”
The goal is to walk, run, or bike as a community to complete a total of 10,000 miles.
“If people can’t join us for the community walk, the virtual event encourages them to take a spin class, walk, run, or bike in support of breast cancer,” said Forood.
This year, the Miles of Hope Breast Cancer Foundation is honoring Carol Paris-Steffens and Paulette Pettorossi.
In 2004, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, Carol Paris-Steffens became involved with Miles of Hope. She is currently on the Miles of Hope Metastatic Breast Cancer Committee.
“Since the beginning, Carol and her husband have been extraordinary volunteers from attending every walk and helping people register to handing out t-shirts and water,” said Forood. After being re-diagnosed with breast cancer, she is surrounded by great medical care, a loving husband, family, and friends.
Today, Paulette Pettorossi is a 14-year breast cancer survivor. Miles of Hope created a scholarship in her name,“The Paulette Pettorossi Scholarship”, to which most recently went to a Beacon high school senior. “She’s one of those people that is a grandmother to everyone and has been raising money for us since 2005,” said Forood.
So far, Miles of Hope has raised 50% of its $100,000 goal in raising money for breast cancer.
“Each year our goal has always been to distribute the funds raised toward our four pillar programs in the Hudson Valley” said Forood. “These consist of the medical gap care fund which is helping people in treatment with their bills and finances, complementary medicine, scholarships for college-bound high school seniors whose lives have been affected by breast cancer, and a peer-to-peer hotline uniting recently diagnosed breast cancer patients with trained survivors.”
To date, Miles of Hope has given away over $2.8 million dollars in funding programs to educate and support people affected by breast cancer within nine counties in the Hudson Valley.
“We continue to grow as a foundation and even if I no longer was Executive Director, anyone joining Miles of Hope would have all the support they need from our team and the social service agencies that partner with us,” Forood said.
