Yosemite High School students play active role in Relay for Life
Students combine efforts for Relay for Life May 21-22
BY EARLENE WARD - SPECIAL TO THE SIERRA STAR

SUBMITTED
Students from Yosemite High School will help their community and honor family members who have had cancer by working at the Relay for Life, set May 21-22.

Relay For Life gives nine Yosemite High School students an opportunity to help their community and to honor family members who have had cancer.

The students from Linda Heinbach’s home economics classes will be helping with the luminaria, kids’camp and in any other way they can. Heinbach is chairman of the luminaria and is most grateful for the assistance her students provide to prepare the bags, type labels, put in the glow sticks and distribute them around the track. They also help with set-up and clean-up.

“They help wherever needed,” Heinbach said. She estimates that the students will put in about 300 hours as a group to help with the event.
The sixth annual Relay For Life in Eastern Madera County will be held Saturday and Sunday, May 21 and 22 at Wasuma Elementary School in Ahwahnee.

The 24-hour event begins at 9 a.m. Saturday and continues through 9 a.m. Sunday. Members of each participating team will be walking or running the track for the entire 24 hours. For more information about the event, call Janice Ellis, chairman, at (559) 683-0968. The event is sponsored by the American Cancer Society.

The relay is the senior project for Ashley Zukas and Katie Sweeney. For the other students, it is just an opportunity to help.

Dotti Jackson is helping for the fourth year at Relay For Life. She said she has lost a lot of family members to cancer and “I like to help the community.”

Helping for the second year are Jamee Bolding, Olivia Pogue and Melanie Deto. First year helpers are Patricia Byers, Lindsey Sanders and Kellie Tomazin.

All nine of the students will be at the relay for the 24-hour period.
Several of them have been attending the Relay For Life committee meetings since the beginning of the year.

Bolding, who has also lost family members to cancer, said “it feels good to help others make money to try to cure cancer.”

Zukas said she is involved in the relay for several reasons: “I really like working with Mrs. Heinbach and it is something to do for the community.” She also said that an uncle had lymph node cancer and after chemotherapy is doing okay.

Sanders’ uncle had a brain tumor and “is alive and getting much better.” She said she is involved in the relay because “I want to help out.”

Byers “loves helping the community” and she is honoring her father who has cancer.

The students will not be walking as members of a team during the relay but this year, as in the past, they will be ready and willing to walk as substitutes for any team that needs them.

Along with helping in Kids’ Camp, the students will be working to bring other people in to entertain the children or coordinate games.

Heinbach has been involved in Relay For Life since the beginning.
“I love to see the community come together,” she said. “Relay is a huge undertaking. The first time I saw the luminaria it was breathtaking and I knew I had to stay involved. I have such wonderful students who are always willing to help. It’s great to see them out in the community.”

Relay For Life is not the only project for these students. They all sold the Fresno Bee on Kids’ Day to raise money for Children’s Hospital of Central California and they are making bibs and baby blankets for the hospital through Project Linus. They are also putting together backpacks with journals and paper goods for the people in the women’s shelter.

All of the students say they want to stay involved in the relay after they graduate from high school.

They agree that it is “definitely a good way” to spend their time.

Yosemite Joint Union High School District News