Family's Focus on High School's Relay Event This Year

It was a special week in many ways for Scott Sivco, of Warren, even before he gave the opening speech at Friday's America Cancer Society Relay for Life event at Watchung Hills Regional.

But then considering his biography, it makes sense. As he put it, he's a cancer survivor, a strong advocate and now a researcher at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

Sivco was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was 10. After treatment, he was able to enjoy life as a healthy teen at Watchung Hills Regional, attend Rutgers—where he just graduated with a degree in bio-medical engineering, and launch his career as a researcher.

"I'm doing research on the third floor (at the CINJ); I got treated on the first floor," he said, adding he had cultivated his first cancer cells for study earlier in the day.

It's a motivational story if ever there was one, and it's motivated his younger sister Carolyn, now a senior at WHRHS, to be involved in the Relay for Life events every year she's been at the school.

This year, Carolyn co-chaired the event with Vishakha Ramakrishnan, guiding the many volunteers and committees which bring together the event which not only raises money for cancer research but also celebrates cancer survivors.

Friday's Relay drew about 400 for an overnight walkathon, and would likely have been uneventful, thanks to Carolyn and Vishakha's experience with previous events, but for a late afternoon deluge, which forced the event inside.

"We were sitting in the snack shack, coming up with ideas, for about an hour," Vishakha said.

"It made it very complicated," Carolyn added.

While the co-chairwomen knew the school's gyms could be used, they weren't certain how the many presentations and refreshment tables would fit, and how the overnight campers would fare in an open gym floor.

But thanks to many volunteers, the event was quickly restructured and moved inside.

Other complications that arose—such as a missing dinner entree for the cancer survivors dinner, one of the Relay for Life keystone events—worked out quickly (Carolyn credited Stirling House chef Chris Ottobre for providing food for the survivor's dinner "at the last minute").

The Relay aimed at raising $50,000 for the American Cancer Society, but Scott Sivco said events like it mean something more to cancer's victims, their families and survivors.

"The big thing I always tell people is there are two battles you have," he said. "The first is medical, dealing with the onslaught of tests and treatments—but a second and as important psychological battle that occurs. "This is where community can be so important—that support that everyone needs."   

He said that's where people can help: volunteering to be a counselor at American Cancer Society camps—or even just remembering their freinds an neighbors with cancer may be too busy with the medical battles to have time for simple things, like holiday gifts.

"I can tell you, it menas so much to them," he said.