Volunteers walk around E. John Blum Track at Chircop Field in Dearborn Heights during last year’s Relay for Life.
Teams are busy raising money for the seventh annual Relay for Life which will be held nationwide Saturday and Sunday. Locally, teams will walk to support cancer research from 10 a.m Saturday to 10 a.m. Sunday at the Dearborn Community & Performing Arts Center, 15801 Michigan Ave., and Chircop Field behind Pardee Elementary School, 4650 Pardee in Dearborn Heights.
To date, 562 volunteers across Dearborn have raised $42,000 for the American Cancer Society event. Leading teams is Team Dearborn, which has collected $7,800. Suad Alie & Friends is second, with $3,200 raised and Team HFCC is third with $3,150.
In Dearborn Heights 154 have collected spare change and checks totaling $11,546. Topping the leader board is the team from O.W. Best Middle School, which has collected more than $5,500. Alicia’s Army of Angels team ranks second at just over $2,000, while the city libraries’ Dewey Decimators team has raised more than $1,000.
Relay For Life gives people a chance to celebrate the lives of people who have battled cancer, remember lost loved ones and fight back against the disease. At the event, teams of people will camp out at their respective sites and take turns walking laps around a track. Each team strives to have at least one person on the track for the duration of the event.
People interested in joining or supporting a team can go to www.relayforlife.org/dearbornmi or www.relayforlife.org/dearbornheightsmi.
To learn more, call American Cancer Society community representative Kelly Brown at (248) 663-3414.