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Health & Fitness

Santee girls to walk 50 miles in 3 days for friend with MS

Three young East County women are planning to walk 50 miles in three days in a multiple sclerosis fundraiser to support a friend who has the chronic disabling disease.

 

The trio -- Keely Hunt of Santee, 31, Brittani Frederick of Santee, 27, and Jen Taylor of El Cajon, 27 – will join about 220 others in the fundraiser next month. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s 2013 Southern California Challenge Walk MS will be held Sept. 27-29. The fundraiser will begin that Friday morning at Carlsbad’s Flower Fields and end around noontime Sunday in downtown San Diego at Embarcadero Marina Park South.

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The three friends will walk in support of their friend Emily Rangel, 32, of El Cajon. Rangel was diagnosed three years ago with MS, a chronic, unpredictable and disabling disease of the central nervous system with no known cause, cure or prevention. Frederick and Rangel became friends five years ago after meeting at a Jazzercise exercise class in El Cajon. The three walkers have formed a spicy-sounding walk team for the Challenge Walk event, “Emily’s Bitches.”

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“It’s sort of a joke nickname since we will call each other by it sometimes,” Frederick said. “Plus, we wanted to use that name to add a lighter mood to a rather serious situation for our friend Emily. Her symptoms are quickly progressing. I felt helpless to do anything as she’s been losing feelings in her feet and legs. So I decided to go on this three-day journey. I was thrilled when Keely and Jen didn’t hesitate in joining me. Emily and her family are grateful for the encouragement and we’re looking forward to it.”

 

Taylor was married last year to her high school sweetheart, both attended Santana High School in Santee, and Hunt, Frederick and Rangel were in her wedding. All of them were bridesmaids in Hunt’s wedding held Aug. 16, as well as Frederick’s wedding to be held on Oct. 19.

 

The minimum donation required to walk in the Challenge Walk fundraiser is $2,500 per person, which includes overnight hotel accommodations, meals and entertainment for all participants. “We have held bake sales and had a fundraiser at Keely’s house called `Mimosas for MS,’ where we raised $2,700 toward the $7,500 that we need,” Frederick said.

 

Another fundraiser will be held on Saturday, Sept. 14, two weeks before the Challenge Walk weekend. Manzanita Brewing Co., a popular local restaurant and microbrewery at 10151 Prospect Ave. in Santee, will donate half of every $5 tasting ticket sold from 1 to 10 p.m. on that day. The public is invited to assist the girls in their fundraising efforts.

 

“Everyone at Manzanita Brewing has just been tremendous in their support for us, and we’re hoping many people join us to help us find a cure for this hideous disease,” Frederick said.

 

Challenge Walk information, as well as donations to walkers, can be made at www.MyMSChallenge.com. Hunt, Frederick and Taylor also have a Facebook page for updates, www.Facebook.com/EmilysMSGirls.

 

The National MS Society’s Pacific South Coast Chapter said about 80 of the 220 walkers preparing for the upcoming 12th annual Challenge Walk have MS, the most common neurological disease leading to disability in young‑ to middle‑aged adults. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50, and more than twice as many women as men have MS. MS interrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and the body. Symptoms cannot be predicted and can vary greatly, ranging from numbness in the limbs and extreme fatigue to loss of balance and muscle coordination or paralysis.

 

The Challenge Walk’s first day, 20-mile walk will begin at the Flower Fields in Carlsbad and end at the San Diego Marriott Del Mar Hotel. Day #2, another 20-mile trek, will begin at the hotel and end at Sunset Point in Mission Bay, where buses will shuttle walkers back to the hotel for a dinner and entertainment. The final third day, a 10-mile walk, will begin at Sunset Point and end around noontime at Embarcadero Marina Park South, located behind the San Diego Convention Center in Downtown San Diego.

 

Since the event’s inception in 2002, when 179 local walkers raised $496,000, the Pacific South Coast Chapter’s Challenge Walk has raised a cumulative total of more than $10 million, which is among the highest dollar amounts of any of the nine other Challenge Walk MS events organized by the 50-state network for MS Society chapters in the U.S. The Southern California Challenge Walk MS, organized by both the San Diego-based Pacific South Coast Chapter and the Los Angeles-based Southern California and Nevada Chapter, is the only Challenge Walk west of the Mississippi River.

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