Latest / The Keri Croft Show / Little Legends Lemonade Ep 01: How One Mom Sparked a Movement for Kids With Cancer

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Little Legends Lemonade Ep 01: How One Mom Sparked a Movement for Kids With Cancer · The Keri Croft Show

• 0:00
  Keri Croft: Hey there, you beautiful badass.
• 0:02
  Keri Croft: Badass badass.
• 0:05
  Keri Croft: Welcome to the Carrie Croft Show.
• 0:10
  Keri Croft: Oh, there's no echo?
• 0:12
  Keri Croft: Oh, sweet.
• 0:15
  Keri Croft: Hey, where there's a will, there's a way, guys.
• 0:17
  Keri Croft: I love that.
• 0:18
  Keri Croft: Well, welcome to the Carrie Croft Show.
• 0:20
  Keri Croft: How's it going?
• 0:22
  Keri Croft: Good.
• 0:22
  Keri Croft: Thanks for having us.
• 0:23
  Keri Croft: I mean, thanks for coming on.
• 0:25
  Keri Croft: You guys are just doing some great work.
• 0:27
  Keri Croft: So I appreciate you carving out time for little old me.
• 0:31
  Keri Croft: Are you familiar with the show at all?
• 0:33
  Keri Croft: Is this your is just your first uh first entrance into the show?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was not familiar until uh a few weeks ago when they first started talking about it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been listening ever since then.
• 0:45
  Keri Croft: Yeah.
• 0:46
  Keri Croft: Well, so just to tee it up, um, so this is our third year doing the Little Legends Lemonade Stand.
• 0:53
  Keri Croft: It started at my house in Upper Arlington.
• 0:56
  Keri Croft: So we've done it for the last two years, and then Tupelo Honey on Lane reached out, and they're they've been gracious enough to offer their entire patio on August 2nd from 11 to 1.
• 1:06
  Keri Croft: And I had gone to a little event at Panacea with my friend, and that's when I was introduced to Cancer Free Kids.
• 1:13
  Keri Croft: And I'm like, well, we just found our place where we're gonna put the money.
• 1:17
  Keri Croft: And so August 2nd, 11 to 1, we would like to try to raise$5,000 in two hours.
• 1:24
  Keri Croft: And we're also going to open up, yeah, right.
• 1:27
  Keri Croft: We're also gonna open up the donations the week prior.
• 1:30
  Keri Croft: So as we drop these really impactful episodes uh throughout the week leading up to August 2nd, we're hopeful that people will also donate to this incredible cause, cancer-free kids.
• 1:41
  Keri Croft: And then as we do on the Carrie Croft show, we do things very like it's fun.
• 1:45
  Keri Croft: We've got music, we've got tons of giveaways.
• 1:48
  Keri Croft: The the local community here never ceases to amaze me.
• 1:52
  Keri Croft: So we've got like the fluff laundry, Tupelo Honey is giving a gift card.
• 1:56
  Keri Croft: They're doing uh an adult lemonade the week before and doing donations for that, lacquer gallery, the Tox Dublin, Sarah Ortlip Pilates, Donaldson, I'm gonna miss some.
• 2:07
  Keri Croft: But it's incredible how everyone's just kind of coming together, doing giveaways, making it fun for people.
• 2:13
  Keri Croft: And another thing I'll say before I close this out is if you're listening right now and you are in the community and you're looking for something this summer to have fun with your kids, but also show them teamwork, show them philanthropy, and that the world doesn't revolve around them, that there's actually people out there you can help and have fun doing it.
• 2:32
  Keri Croft: This is a great, a great event.
• 2:33
  Keri Croft: So we are just honored to be a part of it.
• 2:36
  Keri Croft: Um, some small part of you know helping you guys get the grants you need for these kids.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I randomly uh chose a podcast of yours to listen to.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um very first one.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I just randomly chose one, and you were talking about the lemonade stand.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just gone for a walk and I'm listening.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's fun.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then you said, and it's gonna benefit cancer-free kids.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that.
• 3:01
  Keri Croft: So that's that's like that's like the universe, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so excited.
• 3:06
  Keri Croft: Let's start from Ellen, you know, your entrance and you created this what 25 years ago because of your daughter's diagnosis at five months old.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:15
  Keri Croft: Like, as a let's talk about that though, as a just before we even get into the cancer-free kids thing.
• 3:21
  Keri Croft: I just want as a parent and and parents out there, because I feel like if you've never dealt with something like this, especially with your child, like if you see this episode, I don't want people's reflex to be like, I have to turn this off.
• 3:34
  Keri Croft: I want people to open their eyes and listen.
• 3:37
  Keri Croft: Um, and so just as a parent who has gone through this, like just for a minute, like what was that like?
• 3:43
  Keri Croft: It had to be just life-altering.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, for sure.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: It it absolutely changes your life, um, but also opens up your eyes to things that you just were completely unaware of, you know, and I think that's the issue.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people just have never known a child that had cancer, or even if they did, they didn't know um, you know, enough about it to know um why the existence of cancer-free kids um needed to happen.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, my story begins on Christmas Eve in church, and um my uh five-month-old daughter in her car seat sitting uh you know next to me, and um just kept noticing something looked weird with her eye.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: It looked like looked white inside there instead of black like normal.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so when we got home, we started to, you know, look more carefully and realized that she really wasn't seeing out of that eye at all.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: We could tell.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when we covered up her, what we thought was her good eye, she would act like she was blindfolded.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it's Christmas Eve, you know, and so um the uh you know, we call the doctor, one thing leads to another.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: We end up up at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and um they let us know that she has cancer in not just that eye, but in both of her eyes.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that began our journey into this um, you know, world of childhood cancer, and um, she ended up losing one of her eyes.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: They removed her eye um on New Year's Day, so just a week later.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And um I'm happy to say that we um are absolutely one of the lucky ones.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she is now a 27-year survivor.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she's healthy and thriving and just doing awesome.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so, of course, I thank God for that every day, but I also couldn't unsee, you know, what I now knew.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so even though she has been healthy since um she had a recurrence at two years old, but she's been healthy and cancer-free since then, um, you know, you can't really forget an experience like that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And what happened was I just started asking questions of she was treated at three different hospitals.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: We um met lots of different different doctors and nurses, and I just started saying, where are we in this war on cancer and why aren't we winning it?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what's what's holding us up?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: And um what I learned was that it was money, and I was pretty shocked, you know, as the as a parent, um, you know, with all the money that we spend in this country, that's that's the reason.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that's especially true with childhood cancers.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the the short answer is it's not profitable, um, which is hard to hear, you know, when when you're a parent and your daughter's being treated with drugs that are decades old and that you know do a lot of harm to a young growing body, um, drugs that weren't ever meant for children in the first place.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, you know, you just start to think like, how can we do better?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, once I realized that, you know, the the troops aren't coming to help, you know, the the government funding isn't coming, the pharmaceutical company funding isn't coming because they can't make any money on um curing children with cancer, then I realized it was up to us to do something about it, and so we um decided to start Cancer Free Kids for the sole reason of funding early stage research.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's about the time that I met Dr.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Kripe, and he was instrumental in helping us figure out how could us having a little bit of money have a big impact.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so for the last almost 25 years, we've been raising money every way we can, um, and we give it all away at the end of the year to early stage childhood cancer research to kind of give a brand new idea a start.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we knew that if we gave the researchers who have these ideas but but don't have any funding to try them, um, and Dr.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Krike help helped me realize that that's the biggest impact we could have.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've spent the last 25 years doing that and seeing that that can translate into millions of dollars of follow-on funding because they could prove that their concept um could possibly work.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's that's how we started.
• 8:05
  Keri Croft: And so then, Dr.
• 8:05
  Keri Croft: Kripe, you you got a pretty big role over there at nationwide, right?
• 8:08
  Keri Croft: Like head of hematology and oncology in the pediatric department.
• 8:12
  Keri Croft: Did I say that right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or give me the right, that's right.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:15
  Keri Croft: I mean, you know, I just look I looked at it like 25 times, hoping I can like still retain information.
• 8:20
  Keri Croft: That's a big job.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's a it's a big job to take care of kids with ki cancer and to uh be trying to study the next generation of drugs that we might be able to use in the future.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have a we not only have a big staff of of faculty, 35 board-certified pediatric hematologists, oncologists, plus another dozen PhD scientists, and you know, all centered on the same mission, help help take care of kids with cancer and their families, get them through the journey, and and help discover the next therapies.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: But fortunately, we're at a large hospital with a great community with a lot of support to help us on that that mission.
• 9:01
  Keri Croft: So when you guys met, and it's been a long time, you did someone say, Hey, this is the guy you need to talk to?
• 9:08
  Keri Croft: Like, did you cold call into him?
• 9:09
  Keri Croft: How did you get get with this this guy here?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I actually read it in the paper, you know, back when we used to get, you know, papers.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that this um at the time he was at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and um it said in the newspaper that this person who was a pediatric oncologist was um trying to be on the show's survivor.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he wanted to do that so that he could help raise awareness um and money for um childhood cancer research.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I think I need to meet him.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it was like that weekend.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think Tim, weren't you like at a 5k or something?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere I knew you were gonna be, and I just stalked you and and went up and introduced myself.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's one of those things where, you know, I'm sure it's you know, initial oppression is kind of like, yeah, sure, you're gonna raise millions of dollars for uh for research, you know.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: But he uh was gracious and helped me from the beginning and and really, you know, helped us decide where our funds could have the biggest impact.
• 10:12
  Keri Croft: So, Tim, I'm gonna call you Tim now.
• 10:14
  Keri Croft: We're on a team for this.
• 10:16
  Keri Croft: Um when you were coming up in med school and you were a youngster, not that you're you know you're still fairly young, um, what was your what was your draw to to pediatric cancer?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I actually when I was a teenager, one of the my friends uh younger brothers died of childhood cancer.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it sort of that and and I distinctly remember, you know, being at his funeral and and experiencing that loss.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh fortunately it wasn't my own family, but close enough that it was had a had a big impact.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that was unacceptable, right?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and the more I learned about it, the more I learned that actually cancer was pretty prevalent, not just among kids but adults.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the journey for people was was horrible and it disrupted lives and so forth.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sort of a person who doesn't like to take no for an answer.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So uh like to keep going until we get to a yes.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that so also, you know, to be honest, the science of of biology uh is very interesting, and and we were learning more and more about how cancer cells worked, and and it it just seemed like a solvable problem.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So something that that we needed to take on.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not easy to solve, but you know, we put people on the moon in the 60s with that technology.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we can do great things when we put our heads together.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I I felt like it was something doable uh within my lifetime, and I wanted to be part of it.
• 11:47
  Keri Croft: And I want to go back to what you said, Ellen, because you described it um pretty well.
• 11:51
  Keri Croft: I that when I was researching this and kind of getting my arms around it, because when you first hear this, you're you are appalled.
• 11:57
  Keri Croft: You're like, wait, how can pediatric cancer, how can it be the like not funded?
• 12:03
  Keri Croft: You know, and then you you obviously the realities of life are you know, fair or unfair.
• 12:08
  Keri Croft: But it's so important to remember that like even if you like if you raise$20,000,$50,000, you prove something, you prove the concept, and then you can get more money.
• 12:21
  Keri Croft: Because there was something I was reading about, like, okay, you've been able to raise$10, and that gives you like a hundred million because someone's like, okay, it's like a shark tank.
• 12:29
  Keri Croft: Like you're like proving that something is hot, right?
• 12:32
  Keri Croft: And so like you're in the very, very like beginning stages of these really smart, genius scientists and innovators who are like, wait, I Eureka, I think maybe we can do this.
• 12:43
  Keri Croft: And most people are like, eh, that's gonna cost too much, prove it, whatever.
• 12:47
  Keri Croft: You're this is what Cancer Free Kids is doing, is allowing for these budding ideas to be come to come to life and then grow and get bigger funding, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I mean, most funding mechanisms, um, they they want to fund something that's gonna work, right?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: They they want to fund something that has some data to support it, some reason to believe that this is this is actually going to work because people don't want to waste their money, right?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, but the problem is that we don't know if it's gonna work yet because it's a brand new idea.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: It hasn't been tried before.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's the whole point of it.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, what what Cancer Free Kids does is just give them a chance to think differently, think outside the box, not just take the safe bet that can get funding.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we're introducing a whole different um mechanism where we're saying try something new.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it we know it's high risk, high reward, and we know that a lot of it isn't gonna work, but when it does, it could change everything.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the kind of thing that those ideas aren't gonna be tried at all if somebody doesn't give them a little bit of money to try it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so like I said, that's what we've been doing from the beginning.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's been our singular focus, um, and that has translated into once they get the data from that initial study, then they can take that and go apply for bigger funding somewhere else.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so our funding, even to this day, what you know, we're we're at the point now where we're giving away, you know, one and a half million, close to two million dollars a year.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but our individual grants are still small because we can give somebody$50,000 or$100,000, and that's all they need for to get to for proof of concept.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now I can take that and then I can go apply to another organization or to um a government entity and say, give me a million dollars and then get it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um so our you know, our investment, which has been about$12.5 million to date, um, has translated so far into$125 million in other funding that they would have not gotten if we hadn't given them given them a little bit of a start.
• 14:56
  Keri Croft: Now, Tim, are you the guy that that vets all this?
• 14:59
  Keri Croft: That says, like, okay, who like there's a scientist and he's like, I've got an idea, like Doc Brown.
• 15:06
  Keri Croft: And like, who who who's the person that gets to like say yes or no, or how does that go?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Alan Great is a man that makes those decisions.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in the early days, I would just advise them to explain what each project is about, try to turn it into lay language.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, scientists are really smart, but they're not the best at explaining things.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I would help them understand what the project's about, but they would make the decisions about what's important or what sounds good.
• 15:34
  Keri Croft: Can you just for someone who's listening, can we dumb this down?
• 15:38
  Keri Croft: Like, can you give us a couple of really great things that have happened or that are on the horizon, like talk us through in layman's terms, something, a therapy?
• 15:48
  Keri Croft: I know that Julie, who works for cancer-free kids, she said something to me about her daughter had was it bone cancer?
• 15:54
  Keri Croft: She has some like a magnet in her in her leg or something, it was some like innovation.
• 15:59
  Keri Croft: I'm just curious, like, what has uh been positive in terms of innovation for pediatric cancer in the recent, you know, 10, 20 years?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a magnet thing is pretty cool where they put uh because as you're growing, if if you have something removed from your leg, say it changes the length of your leg, and then as your other leg grows, you want to keep the leg that got surgery growing.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is some really cool surgical innovation innovation innovations where you can put in a magnet and it actually extends, makes the leg uh prosthesis a little bit longer each time.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I think one of the most exciting innovations recently is is the ability to turn the immune system against cancer.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the immune system evolved over millions of years to, or however long, maybe humans haven't been on that long, but for for tens of thousands of years to fight off infections, and we've now figured out how to redirect it, not just toward infections, but toward cancer cells.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been really a game changer.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've been able to take immune cells, engineer them, aim them at the cancer, and and fire them off, and and they've been having really amazing results.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and doing being able to do that more and more and in different ways is is what's very exciting right now.
• 17:16
  Keri Croft: So, Tim, uh you feel like someone who and you too, Ellen, but uh you feel like you were born for this.
• 17:22
  Keri Croft: Like there was this was in c you know, the new word is encoded.
• 17:25
  Keri Croft: This is what they say today, just so you know, in the streets, you were encoded for this.
• 17:30
  Keri Croft: But I always wonder when someone has a job like this that is so important and and just so it can be so heavy at times, it's like this is the real stuff, right?
• 17:38
  Keri Croft: Like, how do you manage your uh mental health and your life if you see something really sad, or I just I I can't imagine how you'd have to like move in and out of, or do you not see it that way because you're like this is what I was meant to do.
• 17:53
  Keri Croft: How do you handle that?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you asking me?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or uh, you know, I I maintain hope.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the way I handled it over the years is I've been able to see enough successes.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of like it into golf.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every now and then I hit a good shot and I feel like I know what I'm doing.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so it keeps you coming back, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we have enough successes in childhood cancer.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've been able to cure cancer in some cases.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Ellen's daughter is an example.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So these are this gives us hope for others, but there's still plenty, plenty of improvement that that needs to be made and plenty of sadness to go around.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um those are difficult times to get through.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the least favorite parts of my job.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: But being in a lot in research, it gives me hope because we're thinking about the next thing that we can do and the next innovation, and um, it's hope that keeps us going along with Ellen's money.
• 18:47
  Keri Croft: Well, right.
• 18:49
  Keri Croft: So, Ellen, for you, you know, I am like most people would, you know, you go through something tough, it changes you, right?
• 18:59
  Keri Croft: But not only did you go through something tough, but you decided to make a huge difference.
• 19:05
  Keri Croft: And that is like the one percentile, right?
• 19:08
  Keri Croft: The grit, the resilience, the resourcefulness that it and the badassery, quite frankly, that it took for you to do that.
• 19:16
  Keri Croft: And I think it's such um, it's such an inspiration and a testament for someone who is watching this or sees your story to say, no, I actually can, in the depths of my own despair, in this story I would never ask for, I can make something incredible.
• 19:33
  Keri Croft: Like it's so cool what you've done.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, certainly not alone.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that, you know, sitting in my living room alone when on my daughter's first day at kindergarten, I thought, hmm, I wonder how you do this.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and just started calling people.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there are people that God put in my life along the way, and it certainly has not been a one-woman show by any stretch of the imagination.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I'm I continue to be amazed to this day.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, how how much we've grown, how much of a difference our funding has made.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we have, you know, uh you asked earlier how we make the decisions about what to do with the funding.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: We have a world-renowned um scientific review council that from from all over the country that helps us make those decisions.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, we have over 500 volunteers that help us every year.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: We have an awesome staff.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, about seven years ago, I hired a new executive director who has just been an amazing blessing and helped us raise more money than ever.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there's just been all these people that just have come into the picture just when we've needed them and um, you know, just kept us going.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, it's not without its its you know ongoing challenges for sure, but also um we always operate from a standpoint of hope.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've I've been to you know other organizations where it's all you know like talking about how sad it is, and and it's really sad some of the time.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we're you know, the the scientists are doing such a better job year after year after year of curing more and more of our children.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and don't get me wrong, it's still important for people to know that in this country more kids die from cancer than any other disease.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: So why aren't we doing anything about it?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's still something that makes me very angry to this day.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we are doing a better job.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we there's a lot of good people that are you know dedicating their lives to it, and that gives us all hope.
• 21:37
  Keri Croft: Yeah.
• 21:38
  Keri Croft: And so let's talk a little bit about the Hundred Mile Challenge.
• 21:41
  Keri Croft: Yeah.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: The Hundred Mile Challenge is um our biggest initiative now, and it's kind of new to us, but a few years ago, um, you know, we had been doing our fundraising events in Cincinnati and in Columbus because those are the two hospitals that we fund.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're Lucky to have two of the top five hospitals in the country for pediatric cancer research in Ohio.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's where we focus our funding.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: But you can only have so many people do in-person events, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we thought, let's create an event that anybody anywhere can do.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so the 100-mile challenge is very simple.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's for the whole month of September because that's child of cancer awareness month.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: And if you sign up to do it, you could be part of a team.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's I plan to move 100 miles any way I want, run, walk, bike, swim, do yoga, whatever you want, and raise$100 or more.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so it has evolved into this really great community building where we have, you know, all these companies that have giant teams and they go on walks together as you know as a group.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: We have community teams, family teams, but we also try to have people from every state to participate.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: We have people in other countries that participate.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's really the only one, the only event that we do that you can do from anywhere.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it's grown into just this great, you know, event where a lot of our families especially feel empowered by the idea that they can get family and friends and everyone they know, no matter where they live, um, to be part of their kids' team, you know, whether their you know um kid is still in treatment or was in treatment 25 years ago, um it's still kind of a rallying cry and um and people can still feel part of this.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we um yeah, so we we just encourage people to to uh sign up for 100 mile challenge either as a company or as a as a community team or be part of our team.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's a really um you know fun way to celebrate child can child of cancer awareness month.
• 23:49
  Keri Croft: Yeah.
• 23:49
  Keri Croft: Are you in Cincinnati?
• 23:51
  Keri Croft: I am.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:53
  Keri Croft: Tim, I know you're here.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:55
  Keri Croft: You Tim, are you gonna stop by the lemonade stand?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like I need to.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm well be thirsty.
• 24:00
  Keri Croft: I'm gonna put you.
• 24:03
  Keri Croft: I might be real thirsty on that day.
• 24:05
  Keri Croft: I'm telling you, you will have fun.
• 24:07
  Keri Croft: I will not disappoint you.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
• 24:09
  Keri Croft: You'll be like, what am I rolling up to?
• 24:11
  Keri Croft: Is this a lemonade stand or like some kind of like I don't know, festival?
• 24:14
  Keri Croft: We make it, we make it pop.
• 24:16
  Keri Croft: We really do.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 24:18
  Keri Croft: So I mean, you know, again, what you guys are doing, you don't need me to tell you, but like you're the you know, the largest funder of early stage, right, in these two hospitals.
• 24:27
  Keri Croft: It's so important.
• 24:28
  Keri Croft: And so if I can be one, you know, I don't know, town crier for this and and help in any way that I can, I am beyond grateful and honored to do so.
• 24:37
  Keri Croft: Do you guys have any lasting words, any words of wisdom that you'd like to leave with the ears and eyes that are upon you?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: My lasting words is thank you, and it makes a difference.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we do appreciate it, and it's for the kids.
• 24:53
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And everybody have a lemonade stand this year.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I that's I heard you say you wanted the people to have 500 lemonade stands, so let's go.
• 25:03
  Keri Croft: Yeah, so Kimmy said that in jest, but we do we do things big, and that's the thing about being in Cincinnati.
• 25:09
  Keri Croft: If there's people in Cincinnati, because I think you guys are also going to promote and you know, yeah, put stuff out.
• 25:14
  Keri Croft: I mean, people can this doesn't have to be.
• 25:16
  Keri Croft: We call ours the flagship, so that's why we have like the music and the antics and everything, but you can prop up a stand with one kid and give us 75 bucks, and yeah, we all know the compound effect of of how that works.
• 25:31
  Keri Croft: So I will say, um, everyone promote it.
• 25:34
  Keri Croft: Tim, if I don't see you, I'm coming for you.
• 25:37
  Keri Croft: Just so you know.
• 25:38
  Keri Croft: And then Ellen, I know you guys will promote it in your own way too.
• 25:41
  Keri Croft: We just we just gave the marketing info to your team.
• 25:44
  Keri Croft: Absolutely extremely gracious.
• 25:45
  Keri Croft: So thank you again.
• 25:46
  Keri Croft: Um and for everybody that's listening, watching, if you're out there following your girl, follow me on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast.
• 25:54
  Keri Croft: Until next time, come to the Lemonades band August 2nd from eleven to one.
• 25:58
  Keri Croft: Support Cancer Free Kids.
• 26:00
  Keri Croft: Thank you for your baby.
• 26:03
  Keri Croft: Thank you.
• 26:04
  Keri Croft: Yeah, thank you.