At this past Sunday’s 15th annual Long Island Pancreatic Cancer Walk held at Jones Beach, more than $1 million was raised by 465 teams. Jericho High School junior Samantha Lustberg, whose grandfather Alan Lustberg passed away in 2013 from pancreatic cancer, has made it one of her goals to see this disease eradicated in her lifetime so no one else loses a loved one.
Exceeding her lofty goal of raising $30,000, Samantha was honored with the second highest fundraising total out of thousands of participants in this year’s event.
When asked at the walk what she was feeling, Samantha said that with the amount of people that showed up to walk, it is clear that this disease must be eradicated.
“Look around today at this event alone and see how many people this disease has affected just on Long Island, let alone worldwide,” she said. “It is clear that this horrible cycle needs to be put to an end.”
Samantha said that research holds the key to finding better treatments and a cure, but only 2 percent of the National Cancer Research budget is given to fund pancreatic cancer, yet it is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in this country.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said.
This year, Samantha’s Team Poppy had 64 people walk with to remember her grandfather, as well as the many others who have been affected by this disease. The Lustgarten Foundation donates 100 percent of every dollar directly to pancreatic cancer research and the hope is to walk for all survivors, not the 93 percent who will not survive when given a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
