This is Bob Sanders' last year as chairman of the Fund-Raising Committee for the Kosciusko County Cancer Care Fund, but he's still working hard to raise money to make cancer patients' lives easier.

Sanders, president of Bodkin Abstract in Warsaw and Syracuse, gets his sympathy for cancer patients from personal experience. Both he and his wife have battled cancer.

The Kosciusko County Care Fund is a local organization that provides such basic needs as financial help for food, everyday bills and medication to cancer patients that the American Cancer Society isn't able to cover.

The Fund-Raising Committee is only in its second year; it was created in June 1999.

Both the fund-raising committee and the Kosciusko County Care Fund boards comprise people from all edges of the county, said Sanders. He stressed that the cancer care fund includes all of the county and not just Warsaw or Syracuse.

"A lot has happened," Sanders said about the fund-raising program. He said the word needs to get out about the Cancer Care Fund so that Kosciusko County cancer patients are aware of the resources.

"People need to know that this is available," said Sanders.

The annual Gala and Golf Outing will be held at the Tippecanoe Country Club this year. The gala and auction will be Sept. 9, followed by the golf outing Sept. 11. The guest speaker at the gala will be Warsaw businessman Craig Tidball, who will speak about his own battles against cancer.

These two events were almost doomed last year. The golf outing and auction were held in Syracuse and raised money for years. A black tie dinner and dance sponsored through Kosciusko Community Hospital had been an event for only a couple of years. Last year the two events would have fallen apart if not for the formation of the fund- raising committee.

The committee board members turned the two events around and combined them to make something new and different. Last year the committee brought in $101,000 in two months to be divided between the American Cancer Society and the Kosciusko County Cancer Care Fund.

This year Sanders said half the funds will go to Indiana University for cancer research and the other half will go to the care fund. The fund-raising committee has also added a bridge tournament, a tennis tournament, a running race and a dance to its list of fund-raisers. This way everyone can help out, even children, said Sanders.

"You don't exclude anyone," said Sanders. "We're trying to include everyone, from the paperboy to the CEO."

Sanders said the community has been great, and everyone wants to do something to help.

Sanders' goal is to keep the money the committee raises in the state. Fifty percent of the money already is used in Kosciusko County. This is important to Sanders because a big part of helping cancer patients is providing them with resources most people don't think about, he said.

According to Sanders, in 1997 12 percent of the money in the American Cancer Society was used for patient services. In 1999, 50 percent of the $100,000 the fund-raising committee raised went to patient services. For the American Cancer Society to reach the same amount of money to spend on patient services they would have to raise $200,000.

Sanders believes patient services are just as important as cancer research. A person who gets cancer can end up losing everything, he said. The money the fund-raising committee raises helps those cancer patients retain some of their lives.

"This is really important for me," Sanders said about helping cancer patients. "We need to show that we care." [[In-content Ad]]