Leah Minnis saw stomach cancer take her aunt's life.
"It was back when I was in elementary school," said Minnis, a supply chain management and German junior. "She wasn't looking very healthy. I saw her a month before her death, and she had wasted away.
"It was hard for me. It was my first time seeing someone so seriously sick."
She said she doesn't want that to happen to anyone else and now, she's doing something about it.
Minnis, with the help of fellow Holmes Hall resident mentors, kicked off a Relay For Life campaign Thursday night in the Sparty's Convenience Store in Holmes Hall.
The mentors' campaign is part of a national movement sponsored by the American Cancer Society. For 24 hours on Feb. 8-9, people across the United States will walk, jog or stay in motion in any way they can to raise funds for the society's research, educational programs and support services.
This is the third year MSU has brought Relay For Life on campus.
Mentors have organized teams that are made up of themselves and the residents on their floors who will spend the night skating at Munn Ice Arena in one-hour shifts.
"Having seen the firsthand effect on my family, it's important to find a cure as soon as possible," Minnis said.
She added it can be difficult trying to bring students out for a charitable cause, so she and other mentors enlisted the help of some local talent to spread the word. Several singers and guitarists who are residents of Holmes Hall played popular songs Wednesday night while other students signed up to skate.
"We're getting the word out with entertainment and publicity," said Emily Perhay, also a Holmes Hall mentor. "We're the only ones in East Lansing doing this."
But before hearing such songs as Michelle Branch's "Everywhere," electrical engineering senior Chad Umscheid, who is also a mentor, took the microphone and left the participants with a message.
"If you look around this room, half of all the guys in here will have cancer, and so will a third of the girls," Umscheid said. "The more research and funding we have, the better we'll have it in the future."
For information on Relay For Life, visit www.cancer.org.
