Fists, feet help raise funds

A couple thousand people jammed the Shadle Park High School gym Saturday afternoon and watched as tae kwon do students kicked and punched their way to raising $30,000.

From white to black belts, they broke about 1,000 wood boards to help one of their own, Toby May, fight brain cancer.

“As an extended tae kwon do family, we need to help her out,” said Brynna Soth, a Mt. Spokane High School student who raised $80 for the fund.

Saturday’s event, called a “break-a-thon,” was invented by Jung Kim, who runs two martial arts schools in Spokane. Students from his two Spokane schools got pledges from friends and relatives for each board they broke.

Three years ago Kim held his first break-a-thon and raised $14,000 for the Wishing Star Foundation.

May, her husband, Bob, and their sons Nathan and Eli started taking tae kwon do lessons from Jung Kim’s Martial Arts four years ago. In July 2005, she was diagnosed with cancer.

“She decided what she wanted for her birthday was for our whole family to do tae kwon do,” Bob May said. “It has had the biggest impact of anything we’ve ever done as a family.”

It has promoted values, discipline, confidence and fitness. Bob May attributes his wife’s ability to beat cancer to the fitness she had from the martial art.

Money raised will be used to help the family pay for an experimental cancer treatment Toby May has been undergoing at Rockwood Cancer Center since May, which costs about $6,000 a month. Her condition has stabilized since treatment started, Bob May said.

The family is grateful for the money, but nothing meant more to the family than seeing all the faces at Saturday’s event, Bob May said.

“That means more than the fundraising,” he added.

And what’s it take to split wood with a bare hand or foot?

“You really have to have a certain sense of focus,” Soth said.