This past Saturday, we had the privilege of being a sponsor of THE PLAYERS DONNA 5K fundraising event to finish breast cancer. This cause is important to us and it was a great opportunity to support the effort to raise funds for breast cancer research and for assisting breast cancer patients with their financial needs.
Turner Pest Control was represented in THE PLAYERS DONNA 5K race by Shawn Svehla and Dustin Turner, two of our long-time employees. Shawn won first place in the master’s division and was seventh overall.
Other Turner employees have also contributed to this important cause. One of our technicians, Patrick Sheehan, has been personally involved in the annual 26.2 with DONNA marathon for many years. While Patrick is not a runner, he has taken part in the race to finish breast cancer for nearly a decade. He’s supported the 26.2 with DONNA organization’s marathon in a number of volunteer roles, including hotel greeter lead, bus transportation, and a quad lead for a section of the race, as well as helping race coordinator Tiffany Davis with setting up start and finish lines, warehouse duties and phone banking on First Coast News.
He notes that funds raised by the many supporters and sponsors of the marathon have led to a possible vaccine for T3 breast cancer, which marathon and organization founder Donna Hicken had, and more trials are under way for the vaccine. Patrick also adds that he has very personal reasons for continuing to support the cause: “My mother recently battled breast cancer and my grandmother had the disease in the 1980s. This is why the race has been a passion of mine for the last nine years. As Donna has said, ‘Jacksonville will be the place that will stop this disease.’ We won’t back down until we defeat it.”
All of us at Turner Pest Control are proud of our team’s support of the critical work being done by The Donna Foundation and Mayo Clinic Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program and were pleased to have made that support official with our sponsorship of the 5K. Visit our Facebook page to see more great photos of the big event.
