ROCKWALL, TX (Jan. 28, 2015) Sitting at the kitchen counter next to her mother, 11-year-old Alaina Pucylowski twirled the multicolored ribbons attached to a large plastic jar. The ribbons weren’t just for decoration, however. They represented the cancer awareness ribbons: blue for colon cancer, yellow for sarcoma, pink for breast cancer, and so forth. The jar was half full of little lavender cancer pins.
She looked humble (and maybe a little shy), but no one could miss the proud looks on the faces of her parents, Ted and Budine. And proud they should be, for Alaina and a group of her close friends were able to raise $500 benefiting the American Cancer Society in just a week and a half of selling those little lavender pins in the jar, all in an effort to show support for her mother who was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer last year.
For about a week and a half, Alaina and her friends went around to a couple of neighborhoods and sold cancer pins for $2 apiece. Alaina also sold pins for four straight mornings at her school, Pullen Elementary, all in the name of those like her mom who are dealing with rare forms of cancer with little to no known cure.
“It made me feel happy,” Alaina said.
Budine was diagnosed in July with Angiosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer which is very rare, as only about 200 people a year are diagnosed with it. Consequently there aren’t a lot of treatments proven to be effective for it, but Budine said she and her family are doing everything currently known to combat it, including multiple surgeries, radiation and year-long chemotherapy which she just recently began.
“I’ve been shocked by the community’s support for our personal situation and our family, and very grateful for how the people in our community have come together and been there for us as a resource,” Budine said. “It’s been humbling how giving the community has been through this process.”
That support was made known particularly during Alaina’s fundraising project, and Budine said that people were very generous with their donations. Of course, Budine also couldn’t help but state just how proud she was of her daughter and the initiative she showed while organizing the fundraiser.
“Alaina is one of those girls who when she sets her mind to something she does it,” Budine said. “This was something that she really wanted to do, and she did everything. She organized it, she enlisted her friends’ help, took the time out of her schedule to go around the neighborhood, to attend the PTA meeting at her school and to show up every morning before school started.”
Even more impressive is the fact that Alaina doesn’t just want to stop there. She said she wants to start a cancer awareness fundraiser program, one that involves Alaina and her cancer awareness fundraising group raising even more money for the ACS.
“I want to sell t-shirts and have people donate some money to the ACS so that they can find a better cure for cancer,” Alaina said.
Currently the goal for the group is to have each of the kids design a picture and create t-shirts with this image. They will then create a website so that people can order the shirts and also donate to the ACS.
“She’s been an inspiration to me because I know that she is thinking of me and has the desire to want to help me get better,” Budine said. “This is her way of doing that. It is a great gesture of love.”
By Austin Wells, Blue Ribbon News reporter.
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SAVE THE DATE
Relay for Life of Rockwall County
Noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, May 2
Wilkerson Sanders Stadium & Parking Lot
relayforlife.org/rockwalltx
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