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April 9, 2004/Nisan 18 5764, Vol. 56, No. 29
Relay for life
BETH OLSON
Staff Writer
Jamie Feldman, left, and Hadar Avrahami take a break from the Relay for Life, where their team raised more than $1,300 for the American Cancer Society.
Photo courtesy of Hadar Avrahami
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Five young women from the University of Arizona laced up their walking shoes to participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life held Feb. 27 in Tucson.
Tanya Slovin, Hadar Avrahami, Beth Shindler, Jamie Feldman and Renee Polsky decided to participate in the all-night walk-a-thon in honor of friends and family members with cancer.
"We were motivated by so many people around us who either passed away from cancer or who have been diagnosed with cancer," recalls Slovin.
The young women were joined by various friends throughout the night. Despite the lack of sleep and the unusually cold temperatures, the team was able to complete the event and raise $1,352.
Four of the girls - Slovin, Avrahami, Shindler and Feldman - lost a childhood friend to cancer five years ago. Sarah Silverman was diagnosed with leukemia when the girls were in eighth grade. Silverman began a friendship with the girls when she moved to the Valley in fifth grade and they all attended Solomon Schechter Day School. They remained friends through middle school and into high school, where they were active in United Synagogue Youth at Beth El Congregation. Silverman died in March of 1999, at the age of 15.
Their participation in the walk-a-thon "was appropriate because it was around the time of Sarah's yartzheit," says Slovin. "She was the first friend we had that we lost to cancer."
Sue Silverman, Sarah's mother, says she's not surprised that the young women would pull together to participate in such an event.
"That's the kind of girls they were. They were very close. They were there throughout (Sarah's) illness," she says.
Silverman recalls her daughter as a loving girl with a passion for Judaism and for her friends, a person who always reached out to others despite her own illness.
Avrahami says that although it would be intimidating to visit Sarah in the hospital, Sarah always made sure that everyone else was comfortable.
"Going to see her in the hospital, I was nervous going, but once I saw her, I felt better," she recalls. "Talking to her would make me feel better. She definitely had a really good attitude."
Silverman says she is touched that Sarah's friends still think about her.
"My one fear is that (Sarah) will be forgotten some day," says Silverman, "so it really means a lot to have these kids do things like this in her honor and talk about her and remember."
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