Edison Mayor Jun Choi helps Janna Zuckerman cut the ribbon to start the Michelle Offsie Memorial Walk for Hope on June 8.
Photos courtesy Ed Bradford
June 24, 2008
What began as a bat mitzva project for Janna Zuckerman has become a major community endeavor. The seventh annual Michelle Offsie Memorial Walk for Hope, established to raise funds for breast cancer research, brought in about $120,000 so far — for a total of $620,000 since the walk’s inception.
“My goal is to raise $1 million before I graduate,” said Zuckerman, 18, of Edison, who just completed her freshman year at Towson University in Maryland.
Walks to benefit the City of Hope in California — a biomedical research, treatment, and educational institute focusing on cancer — have grown in number and contributions over the years. The four-mile trek from the Jewish Community Center of Middlesex County in Edison to Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen — where Zuckerman became a bat mitzva — this year drew more than 1,800 participants.
The brutal heat held down the number of last-minute registrants that morning, according to Zuckerman. Nevertheless, the throng was a far cry from the 250 who walked seven years ago in memory of Michelle Offsie, a close Zuckerman family friend and the bookkeeper at the JCC who lost her life to the disease almost seven years ago at age 46.
The walk featured an international food display with products donated by area restaurants, and a representative from Z-100 radio in New York to provide music for the fourth year in a row.
Additionally, local organizations and businesses signed on as corporate sponsors and some companies publicized the walk among their employees.
As in other years, leftover food was donated to the Mandy Reichman Feeding Program at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, which prepares about 800 sandwiches per week to feed the hungry in Elizabeth.
Award winner
Zuckerman has received many local awards for her work on the walk and other volunteer activities, including being selected from among 24,000 applicants nationally to receive a Prudential Spirit of Community Award.
At college she has started Towson University Goes Pink, a co-ed student organization to raise awareness about early detection of breast cancer and raise funds for research, which will be earmarked for future walks for hope.
Some of the more than 1,800 participants who made the four-mile trek from the Jewish Community Center of Middlesex County in Edison to Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen during the Walk for Hope.
Zuckerman is also vice president of recruitment and retention for the university’s Circle K International chapter, a community service organization, and vice president of programs for Optimist International, whose goal is “to make a difference in the life of a child.” In September she will also be vice president of Active Minds, a mental health advocacy and awareness organization. She received an “Unsung Hero Leadership Award” from Towson for her efforts.
Zuckerman organized the June 8 walk from school, scheduling meetings with business leaders and others while home on spring and winter breaks.
She also credited her parents, Howard and Karen Zuckerman, for the success of the walk.
Those wishing to donate to the Walk for Hope can still do so by sending checks to City of Hope, c/o Janna Zuckerman, 129 Monroe Ave., Edison, NJ, 08820.
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