Relay for Life of Guthrie County teams convened last night to hand in their donations and finalize plans for this Saturday’s big event at the Guthrie Center High School track.

Gigi Nelson, one of this year’s team captains, says her excitement for Saturday’s 12-hour event has now gone through the roof, and she hopes area residents are growing excited too.

“We’ve worked all year on this–it’s not just something that we do during the month of June.  This is an event for the American Cancer Society, and we are so proud of what all the American Cancer Society does for those of us who are survivors and our caregivers too.”

Nelson herself is a breast cancer survivor of six and a half years, and her deep involvement in Relay for Life is attributed to the fact she simply wants to give back to an organization that saved her life.

“What I’m so proud of about Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society is that we put so much of our money into research.  We have 46 scientists who have gone on to win Nobel Prizes in the research they’ve gone for cancer.  Two of the drugs that they discovered in that research saved my life–they were the two drugs I had to have in order to beat cancer.”

And from the sounds of their fundraising efforts for this year’s event, Relay for Life of Guthrie County has helped the American Cancer Society take yet another step toward beating cancer.  Nelson says she anticipates the final fundraising total to be announced Saturday to be well over $60,000 for the second straight year.

To hear about Saturday’s Relay for Life of Guthrie County in full detail, tune-in to today’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County for our full conversation with Nelson.  That program airs as usual during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours on K107.