El Paso, Texas - More than 1,000 Fort Bliss Soldiers along with 15,000 area residents and breast cancer survivors showed their support for victims of breast cancer during a Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure event held at Cohen Stadium Sunday.
The event featured a 5K competitive and noncompetitive race intended to raise money for breast cancer research, as well as booths promoting breast cancer awareness, all in an effort to prevent the loss of life due to this disease.
"(This race) is bittersweet for me because it's a memory of what I went through, but it's also awesome because I look at these people and I think, I know what they went through," said breast cancer survivor Lt. Col. (Dr.) Rebecca Lisi, William Beaumont Army Medical Center chief of the operating room.
Eight hundred and ten runners participated in the competitive race, raising $24,300 to aid in the fight against breast cancer.
Bashar Ibrahim earned first place with a time of 15 minutes, 35 seconds, flowed by Mircea Bogdan with a time of 16 minutes and Kenneth Foster finished third with a time of 16 minutes, 15 seconds.
During the time it took the top three runners to finish the race roughly 33 women were diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide.
"I think everybody at one point in their life has been touched by someone who has cancer," said Lt. Col. Alan Wiernicki, 2-43 Air Missile Defense Battalion commander.
"Globally, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every 29 seconds and, every 68 seconds, a woman dies from the disease," Jeremy Hughes, Breakthrough Breast Cancer chief executive.
This year the El Paso affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation raised $41,547 to help in the fight against breast cancer. Seventy-five percent of the money raised will stay in the El Paso area.
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