As the top U.S. fundraiser among all Row for the Cure® regattas in 2006, Seattle won the right to have members of the U.S. national rowing team participate in the 2007 row. U.S. rowers participating in the regatta include Lindsay Meyer and Portia J. McGee of Seattle, along with Lindsay Shoop (Charlottesville, Virginia), Caryn Davies (Ithaca, N.Y.), Caroline Lind (Greensborough, N.C.), Erin Cafaro (Modesto, Calif.), Brett Sickler (Los Gatos, Calif.) and Rachel Jeffers (Los Gatos, Calif.). Shoop, Davies, Lind, and Sickler all helped the U.S. successfully defend its women’s eight world title earlier this month in Munich.

Other participants include masters and high school crews from throughout Puget Sound and British Columbia along with corporate rowing crews from Starbucks, Microsoft, Lane Powel and Seattle Breast Center at Northwest Hospital. Rowers and paddlers are each encouraged to raise at least $150 – or the cost of a mammogram.

For the second consecutive year, tribal canoeists will join Seattle’s Row for the Cure®. Propelled by up to 10 paddlers, a skipper and a balance person, tribal canoes were once the primary means of transport and trade between native villages on the West Coast. Today, through historical events such as the InterTribal Canoe Journey, coastal tribes of the Northwest regularly come together for paddling journeys to honor their centuries-old traditions.

“The mind-set of native peoples and their economic position combine to make detection (of breast cancer) and treatment difficult,” said Mike Evans, chairman of the Snohomish Tribe and skipper of the Snohomish Blue Herron canoe, who is paddling to help increase awareness of the importance of early detection among native populations. “We bring teachings into the canoe through the use of the language, songs, sharing of stories and traditional teachings,” he said. “Some of these teaching are that, ‘the family is your wealth’ and ‘strong mind and strong bodies’.”

Through partial funding from the Puget Sound Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the Tulalip clinic provides on-going breast cancer screening for Native American women in the Snohomish area without traditional health insurance through the Washington Breast and Cervical Health Program, which targets low income women ages 40 – 64.

Additional funding helps provide for a mobile mammography bus to visit the Tulalip community, bringing the service to women that have difficulty with transportation. The mobile mammography bus visits the Tulalip reservation twice a year serving up to 24 women per visit.

“In a lot of underserved communities, people are more likely to only pay attention to health problems that are bothering them,” said Dr. Cathy Curran, a family doctor at the Tulalip Health Clinic and an organizer of Row for the Cure®. “Transportation is a big issue for some people in the native American community who are uncomfortable seeking healthcare off of the reservation. The funding is critical in helping to make mammography services more accessible.”

Seattle’s Row for the Cure® is one of 50 third-party events that take place each year in the Seattle-area benefiting the Puget Sound Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Third-party events, which are organized by groups other than Susan G. Komen for the Cure, include activities such as Seahawks Football 101, fashion shows, concerts, rodeos and an ultra-marathon run. In the last year, third party events of the Puget Sound Affiliate have raised $363,000 in the fight against breast cancer. Row for the Cure® is one of the top three non-corporate, all-volunteer coordinated third-party events benefiting the Puget Sound Affiliate.

In 2006, the Seattle’s Row for the Cure® raised $50,000 for the Puget Sound Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Proceeds from each Row for the Cure® benefit the local affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, where 75 percent of the money raised stays in the community for education and treatment of breast cancer. The remaining 25 percent of monies raised support national breast cancer research projects.