Friday, January 22, 2010
Pedaling against cancer
A professor is using bike rides as a way to raise money to help breast cancer patients.
Courtesy of JoAnne Poindexter
Joe Scarpaci of Blacksburg pauses just north of Lewisburg, W.Va., during a ride.
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Joe Scarpaci has been biking "since I was knee-high to a grasshopper," and the college professor is still using those skills.
But while he's enjoying vistas, sunsets and sunrises, Scarpaci, who has taught geography, also is raising money to help breast cancer patients.
The Blacksburg resident is the 2009 recipient of the Elizabeth McCullough Fundraising Award at the Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Scarpaci said the award is for his family, who established the Josie Scarpaci Breast Health Access Fund to help provide educational resources for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients after his mother died in 1998.
But it is Scarpaci, a Virginia Tech professor emeritus and a Virginia Military Institute professor, who has raised most of the $25,000 in the access fund, medical center spokeswoman Andrea Romo said.
Scarpaci originally started his fundraising efforts with the Mountains of Misery bike ride, an annual 100-mile Memorial Day weekend event to raise money for cancer research.
He's since altered his course, avoiding interstates and riding various byways through West Virginia and Ohio to deliver donations to the Pennsylvania hospital.
His three-day, 325-mile trek in July from his Blacksburg home to the Magee-Womens Hospital raised nearly $5,000 for the fund.
The bike rides, Scarpaci said, "are nothing compared to what things these women go through."
He recalled how his mother was always trying to keep tabs on medicines, doctor visits, etc. The access fund provides a comprehensive resource binder for patients to keep all paperwork and materials together, he said.
"Cancer is awful to see someone go through it and affects everyone."
Originally, he sought contributions of pennies and nickels, but people from the New River and Roanoke valleys and the Lexington area have been very generous.
On one ride, Scarpaci was wearing a VMI T-shirt. A woman approached him; first about the shirt and then his ride. "The woman opened her purse and gave me all the money she had: $25 in one dollar bills."
Scarpaci said his wife, Gilda, son Michael and daughter Christina, his father Joseph, brother Sam and sisters Darlene and Josette all are big fundraisers in honor of his mom.
