Digging Deep Students Honored For Collecting 669,945 Pennies In Cancer Drive

The noise coming from the Lakes Middle School gymnasium during a Friday rally was deafening.

The shrieks were the kind only teenagers can make - high-pitched and constant, needing little provocation.

But when the parents of a little girl with colon cancer stepped to the microphone, the students suddenly fell silent.

“I’ve got cancer and my 9-year-old daughter has cancer,” Todd Callaghan said quietly. “It’s really important what you’re doing.”

What the Lakes kids are doing is raising money for the American Cancer Society’s biggest annual fund-raiser, the Relay for Life. The fund-raiser is held annually in cities nationwide. Coeur d’Alene’s relay will be held July 14 and 15.

This year, about 552,200 people will die of cancer, more than 1,500 every day. An estimated 1.2 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in 2000, 4,700 of them in Idaho.

Lakes began a penny drive in September, with a lofty goal of raising 1 million pennies - or $10,000 - for the fight against cancer.

In December they were halfway there.

By Friday, the school had raised 669,945 pennies.

And that’s not counting the money filling blue plastic water jugs throughout this community. To date, 130 businesses have joined Lakes’ effort, displaying the jugs the school uses to collect pennies.

Friday’s rally was a celebration of how much the school has accomplished. Attending were Mayor Steve Judy and Superintendent David Rawls, along with representatives from the cancer society.

Teachers dressed in silly outfits and danced to pop music and children performed a drum piece, pounding on empty plastic water jugs. Children won prizes donated by area businesses, including a snowboard, television and M&M telephone.

Rawls told the students how proud he is of them. Most important, he said, is the connection they have made to the community.

“You have established for yourself and your community a model we can all be proud of,” Rawls said.

Dave Eubanks, the Spanish teacher whose idea sparked the penny drive, echoed that thought.

“It has become a phenomenon,” he said. But, he cautioned, “We have a ways to go.”

Nicol Reinicke, the North Idaho area director for the cancer society, asked the children to get to their feet and give themselves a round of applause.

A Lakes graduate, Reinicke told the children they were setting a “shining example.”

“What you’re doing makes you larger than life,” she said.