Girl using Christmas event to raise money for cancer

A local girl is leveraging the holiday season to raise money and awareness of cancer research.

Proceeds from the Ladies Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #10054 Breakfast with Santa on Saturday, Dec. 20, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., at the VFW post at 4651 Homestead Road will go to Isabella Sehnert’s Relay for Life team - Boogie, Shakers, Crunch, Strides.

The cost is $5 per person and the goal is to raise $1,500 through the breakfast and other events that day. There will be a bake sale which will include sugar-free items. Relay for Life will have the luminary bags, bracelets and purple ribbons for sale as well. Arts and crafts that will be for sale were made by the kids on Sehnert’s team. The team is made up of five adults and five kids.

Any monetary donations will be accepted for the Relay for Life under the team name.

“I feel really good about it,” she said about the event.

While the focus will be on the fundraiser, toy donations will be accepted during the breakfast and will be donated to the Toys for Tots program and the Tribe motorcycle club.

Breakfast will include pancakes with your choice of blueberries or chocolate chips and served with sausage and your choice of coffee, orange juice or hot chocolate. The VFW will provide all the food for the event.

Sehnert, who is in her first year as team captain, is a soft-spoken, quiet young lady but she is passionate about her community and the idea of “getting involved.” She is passionate about the fight against cancer and the race to find a cure. Cancer touched her young life with the death of her grandmother and the diagnosis of members of her own family. She said she is aware of cancer’s devastating effects on people and their loved ones.

Sehnert conceived the event along with her mother, Erica Sehnert, and grandmother, Linda Wright, the District Five President of the VFW’s Ladies Auxiliary.

The younger Sehnert started donating her time in the community at the age of nine and has no plans of stopping any time soon.

“She is also the representative for the Rosemary Clarke Middle School for the safe schools, healthy students program,” Wright said.

The idea for the team name came from the “safe schools, healthy students” awareness program. The safe schools healthy students is a program designed to help meet the needs of students and parents within the school district.

“This program offers both physical and emotional support along with counselors at the school as well as a school psychiatrist,” Wright said.

Sehnert explained she is trying to bring awareness to the issues surrounding bullying.

“I take the responsibility of saying something if I see something I don’t like,” she said. “I go and tell someone. I will step in and help someone if I see that they might be in trouble.”

Sehnert said that her biggest frustration is if someone gets into trouble for bullying they are simply given lunch detention.

For more information about this event, contact Linda Wright at 775-419-7857.

Contact reporter Michelle Hermann by emailing michelle.pvtimes@gmail.com