Walk For Hope: “I Walk In Honor of My Friend, Laurie”

SolutionHealth is gearing up for the 3^rd Annual Walk for Hope hosted by The Mary and John Elliot Charitable Foundation at The Elliot on Sunday, June 13. The Walk for Hope is a three-mile walk to and from Elliot Hospital’s main campus. All proceeds from Walk for Hope fundraisers, teams, and sponsors will provide funding for programs and services at the Solinsky Center for Cancer Care at The Elliot. It will also help those patients who are going through financial hardship during their cancer journey.

For those who have had a loved one who received a cancer diagnosis or lost someone to cancer, the Walk for Hope provides a chance to honor them and help further support cancer research.

Soraya Tejeda, Patient Liaison for SolutionHealth, will walk in honor of her friend Laurie, who also worked at The Elliot. Laurie passed away two years ago after first being diagnosed with breast cancer and beating it and then later being diagnosed with liver cancer.

“Our Walk for Hope team, ‘Steps of Love for Laurie,’ was created in honor of my friend Laurie. We were very close and were race buddies. Every race you can imagine, we did together. After Laurie passed away it was difficult for me to run races without her. So, we started this group in honor of her to raise money in hopes to save as many lives as we can,” Tejeda explains.

Steps of Love for Laurie is the name of the team that walks in Laurie’s honor every year. It’s made up of the entire Risk, Compliance, and Legal team, along with family. Laurie’s father and the daughter-in-law of Tina Lambert, another patient liaison at The Elliot, helped design and create shirts for the first walk. Laurie loved cats, so the shirts have a heart with cat paws on one side and a footprint on the other side.

“We walk every year in remembrance of Laurie because she was just an amazing person. She was the one that always was the first one to give her heart and soul and help anyway she could. She was always raising money for fundraisers to help people. That was the beauty of Laurie: she was a person who loved to give,” Tejeda says. “Laurie was a very strong woman, she fought until the end. She fought as hard as she could. My heart goes out to everyone with cancer and to everyone who has lost a loved one to this terrible disease. I just can’t even explain how much it means to me to walk and do this in Laurie’s honor. She was a wonderful person, a great friend, my partner in crime, and always there for me and my children.”

The Steps of Love for Laurie plan to walk every year in the Walk for Hope in remembrance of Laurie. “For families who just recently lost a loved one or know someone going through a cancer diagnosis, the Walk for Hope is a great way to honor them. It’s hard because you want them there with you, but it makes you feel good to see that you helped raise money to help a great cause,” Tejeda adds.

Our goal is to raise $50,000 this year.

Laurie (left), Soraya Tejeda (right) prepare for a race they ran together.