Carmen Leolani White: Go Team Carmen

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Go Team Carmen

It is hard to believe that Team Carmen is back for fourth year!!!

When we moved to California in May, Heather and I were concerned that it would be difficult to keep Team Carmen together. Fortunately, the people at LLS have been wonderful and allowed us to build the team, including multiple events.

2016 will be a little different. We have a small and mighty team of 8, participating in 3 different events;

Chris and Heather White - San Diego Rock & Roll Marathon
Darren Miller - San Diego Rock & Roll Marathon
Carri McClure - Tinker Bell 1/2 Marathon
Diego Angarita - Lava Man Waikaloa
Andrew Hawkins - Lava Man Waikaloa
Julia White - San Diego Rock & Roll Marathon
Stephanie Eppig - Lava Man Waikaloa

Your support will be greatly appreciated. Click the link to the right if you can support in anyway.

We have also found that being in California has opened up a lot of other amazing ways we can help support LLS.

I have been invited to join the Board of Directors for the Orange County Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, with my first task to help the Gala Committee organize their annual fund raising event, which raises over $500K each year to support much needed research.

LLS has a unique program called "Quest for Cures" which allows a person who has personally raised $50,000 or a team who has raised $100,000 to direct their funds to a specific research project. This was always a goal of Heather and mine, to see if Team Carmen could raise $100K in a year so that we could support research that was reducing the toxicity levels of children's chemotherapy drugs.

This new gala event that I am involved with is called - "Men and Women of the Year", where 10 people each raise $50,000 and then direct the funds to the specific doctor and research project that they are passionate about. I absolutely LOVE this, as so often we are not sure where our fundraising efforts go.

As always, it remains a constant struggle for Heather and I, to be involved with LLS and Team in Training. On one hand, we know that we must do what we can to support the elimination of Blood Cancers but on the other hand each and every day we are close to the disease continues to be difficult.

As a quick update. We are loving our time in California. We miss Hawaii and our friends there everyday but we are happy with our move. Trevor is excelling at school and loving exploring all the options he has in sports and other interests. Jake is thriving and his speech is improving everyday. We found amazing health care for Jake at the LA Children's Hospital is world renown for its work in Craniofacial.

Below are a few pictures of some recent moments;