Consumers Energy's Jenny Rickard and Kym Parker are passionate about fighting cancer and supporting the Relay for Life. Listen to their stories and why they will support this effort until no one has to hear "you have cancer" ever again.
Consumers Energy's Jenny Rickard and Kym Parker are passionate about fighting cancer and supporting the Relay for Life. Listen to their stories and why they will support this effort until no one has to hear "you have cancer" ever again.
Description
Me You Us, sponsored by Consumers Energy, dives deeper into the physical, financial, emotional, social, and professional pillars that make up our overall well-being and contribute to our mental health. Through the sharing of personal experiences and conversations with industry experts, we can collaboratively support one another and increase our consideration for the personal well-being of those around us.
Consumers Energy's Jenny Rickard and Kym Parker are passionate about fighting cancer and supporting the Relay for Life. Listen to their stories and why they will support this effort until no one has to hear "you have cancer" ever again.
William Krieger
The views and opinions of the guests of the Me You Us podcast do not represent the views and opinions of Consumers Energy. Hello, everyone and welcome to Me You Us a wellbeing podcast. It's another wellbeing Wednesday here at Consumers Energy. And I'm your host Bill Krieger. Today I have two very special guests to talk about the Relay for Life. And my first guest is Kym Parker. She's an Electric Meter Operations field leader here at Consumers Energy. So Kym, please introduce yourself.
Kym
Thank you. Well, like you said, my name is Kym Parker. I have been with Consumers for just about six years, started in scheduling and came over to being Field Leader in EMO. So I've been part of relay since 1999. Sounds like a song. But I've been doing really in fundraising for quite some time.
William Krieger
Alright, so for our folks out there who don't know, what is EMR or electric meter operations? And what do you do for a living?
Kym
Oh, goodness. So electric meter operations are folks in the field, focus on the electric meters that are at your house or business. We are ones that set that meter after your services run when you go out there and troubleshoot your meter when there's some issues, if you've had estimated reads, we’ll go out there and exchange it. And as a field leader, I just try and ensure that they are doing their job safely. If they have any barriers, I'm going to help them out. And just ensure that we have a good, safe job that we're doing for our customers.
William Krieger
All right, thanks for that. And there's one other thing, Kym, I hope you don't mind me mentioning this. But Kym is a military veteran. And her and I served together in the Michigan National Guard. And Kym did an amazing job back then she does an amazing job now. So thank you for your service. Yes. All right. My next guest is Jenny Rickard. She's contract settlement supervisor here at Consumers Energy. So Jenny, if you introduce yourself, we'll get the conversation started.
Jenny
My name is Jenny Rickard, and I work with the electric supply. And in our group, we settle the contracts, the long-term power purchase agreements where we buy electricity from generators outside of Consumers. A group of three and myself process over a billion dollars for the company, really. And it keeps us busy.
William Krieger
It sounds like it. And thank you for kind of explaining what you do, because so often we talk to people, and I'm like, oh, so this was my title at Consumers. And I remember when I was in the Navy, I was a fire controlman, which meant I worked on guided missile systems. But my mom told everyone on the planet that I put fires out. And I had to explain to her no, Mom, I start fires on other people's ships. That's what I do. So we got we got that all cleared up. So as I said, we're going to talk about Relay for Life, which is an amazing fundraiser that I've known about since I started here at Consumers Energy. But I have to be honest, it feels like over the last few years, I really haven't heard a lot about it. And I know we've had a pandemic. And you know, just a couple of things going on. But I would like to talk about what's going on with the Relay for Life this year, and what your involvement is in that. So, Kym, I know that you're the event co-chair for the Relay for Life this year. So what does that mean? And what do you do get ready for this.
Kym
So what that means there's a there's two of us that are kind of event chairs. We have a staff partner from American Cancer Society that we work with directly to get this event set up all year long. Just because we have a 24 or this year 22-hour event doesn't mean that there's not a lot of prior planning and logistics work and coaching that goes into it and teamwork and trying to get the meeting set up. So we also have a core group of people that we work with, that we kind of conquer and divide different areas, you know, team coaching and sponsorship reaching out to businesses. Again, logistics is a big thing, making sure we have the right location. Our favorite location is of course the Cascades here in Jackson. Last year, we had a little bit of a challenge with that. So we were at Northwest High School. But we're back at the Cascades this year. So dealing with some of their construction. We're putting that event back on there. So let's kind of what our co-leads do.
William Krieger
All right. And so that the audience understands maybe some folks aren't familiar with this, but I know that Relay for Life has actually been around for a long time since 1985. And since that time, they've raised over six and a half billion with a B dollars to save lives from cancer. So can you talk a little bit about what the event is for? And then how do you raise money for this? And what does the event look like?
Kym
Absolutely. So, American Cancer Society is the big parent corporation, right? So Relay for Life is their largest fundraiser to help fight cancer Relay for Life, like you said, started in 1985. When Gordon Klatt took his he was going to walk laps run laps at the time in his effort to raise awareness, so come this year, basically what we do is we try to make it a 24-hour event because cancer never sleeps. So neither should we. We try and make a 24-hour event. We bring teams in that have fundraised all year long. We have fundraisers at those teams’ sites. We have activities like the survivor’s lap, when we open a caregiver’s lap, we have different theme laps, different activities, food trucks, different things for we, like I said, try to be a 24-hour event to bring people together to celebrate our big our big theme is like celebrate, remember. So when we do our luminary lap at night, we light luminaries around our track. And that's our remembrance. And then to fight back. So we bring everybody together that has survived this, that have even lost loved ones, to rally together in a call to action to keep on raising money, keep on raising awareness, keep educating. And one day, we'll be able to not hear the words, you have cancer. And that's our goal.
William Krieger
And that would be amazing day like I didn't share this with either one of you. But I lost my brother to cancer as well as my aunt who's very close to our family. And my wife lost her mother and her stepmother, both to cancer. So this is something near and dear to my heart. So if someone wants to donate funds or anything to this event, um, how would they go about doing that? And is this? So I know in years past, it seems like you could sponsor like somebody for however many laps they were going to do is do we still do that?
Kym
Not as directly? No, we typically ask people to go to our website, which for the event itself is a simple relayforlife.org/Jacksoncountymi. When they go to that page, they can search for their team. So they can this case, Consumers Energy has a team, they can search for their team and or search for their participants. So if you Bill wanted to donate $20 to Jenny, to get her fundraising going, you could go to that relay for relayforlife.org/Jacksoncountymi search for Jenny's name and donate $20 to Jenny. And in turn, she would probably light a candle for you that night in honor of those that you lost or, or that are still fighting in your in your life as well.
William Krieger
Alright, so Jenny doesn't have to carry around a form anymore. Because I remember the some of that, too. That's the way we used to do it. Welcome to the age of computers. Right? Right, we could do it on the computer. So the event date is July 29, starting at 4pm through July 30, ending at 2pm. You mentioned something about a survivor lap and caregiver lap are their certain times where that will be going on.
Kym
So this year, our times are a little different. So our soft opening is at four. And then our survivor in Main Event kickoff is going to be at 6pm. At 6pm. We start with some opening remarks. We have our sponsorship remarks. And then we have a very energetic and very emotional survivor lap where other survivors get to cut the ribbon and start walking and we've lined the track and we applaud and I'm going to get teary eyed now but it's just a great recognition for everybody that has heard those words you have cancer. And if I can just kind of reiterate this for a listener because it's a very unrecognized fact. You're not a survivor because you beat cancer. You're a survivor from the minute the doctor told you have cancer, because your body's already been fighting for who knows how long right? So the folks that have not received their last treatment or who have not heard the words, you're all clear you're in remission. You're still a survivor, right? But you're still beating this because you're here. So everybody that is a survivor gets to take that lap and gets to show off. We do have a caregiver lap that will be following. So in those caregivers or anybody that sat next to you will need your hand while you fought, sat in a hospital room, consoling, grabbed the binder when you guys had to go through treatment and went all through the hardships, I mean, those are caregivers, and we had at least one of those with us, right. So we give recognition to all the caregivers in our lives as well. The only thing that we aren't allowing at this event is our caregiver animals, we do ask that we leave the animals at home because it is a public park. And we are looking out for the safety of everybody. So but we do have a bark for life that happened earlier this year. For those.
William Krieger
We'll have to talk about that next year. Right, that work for life. I like that. I like that idea. You know, important distinction to when you talk about survivor, like what you said that, you know, every day you get up, you're a survivor. And so it's great. It's great that we recognize that and that that's who's out there walking. So thank you for that. Well, you know, Jenny, you've sat there very quietly, throughout this discussion. So I want to kind of bring you into this. So when Kym talks about search for a team, and we think about Consumers Energy, because that's where we're all at right now. And I search for that CE team. Talk a little bit about that because you are the co-chair of the CE team. Correct. And that's our team for all the employees here at Consumers Energy. So you talk a little bit about what you do and what you're looking forward to this year.
Jenny
Okay. So yeah, Heidi Bartlett and I are the CO captains for the Consumers Energy Team. And we try to encourage employees to join the Consumers Energy Team. And we as a team, represent Consumers Energy at the relay. And we have a site where we participate in all the activities that are happening there. But we also try to raise funds while we're at the event. So this year, we're going to have outdoor games, possibly a cornhole tournament. But just being there and participating. There's also a team lap that we take after the survivors. And we just get together as employees. This is not a Consumers sponsored event. It's all an employee volunteer event, where we raise funds, we have a goal as a team, to raise enough to be a participant in the relay event. So we also have communications coming from our team as a whole. We have an executive sponsor, Amanda Wagenschutz who sent out an email earlier this week, actually, June 20, if you're wanting to search your email that has all the links for joining the team for donating for buying a luminaria, which is only $10. And then there is a candle lit and your loved one’s name. Or honor someone who's struggled. There's a lot of different options and a lot of different ways to participate. We're selling coupon books this year, we can buy those online, we're going to do a couple of in person sales. We just do what we can as employees to raise funds for the relay specifically.
William Krieger
Well, you mentioned to two names here that I'm very familiar with Heidi Bartlett, who I've known for quite a while and Amanda Wagenschutz, who is just an amazing leader, just out in front, and really have appreciated working with her over these last couple of years. So you heard it if you're here at Consumers Energy, and you happen to just skip through that email, go back, and look for that email from Amanda that'll have all the information that you will need on there. And another important distinction is that this is really like you said, this is employee driven. That's really an American Cancer Society event that we participate in. So while Consumers Energy isn't necessarily a sponsor, so to speak of the event, do we still participate somehow? Do we still you know, donate? How does that work?
Jenny
Consumers is the most awesome company in the world. So they work very closely with Kym and her team for in kind donations, and they sponsor at the event level, but they don't necessarily sponsor our employee team. So we are really participating on two levels Consumers Foundation, as a sponsor for the event, and then the employees as a team representing Consumers. So the employees are totally separate from that sponsorship that Consumers does.
William Krieger
And we certainly don't want to leave out the another name, and that's Carolyn Bloodworth. Right? What an amazing person she is. She is probably one of the hardest working people that I know it. But she's always got a smile on her face. And she's always willing to help. So she listens. Yeah, so big shout out to Carolyn and Carolyn, I know you're a listener of the podcast. So shout out to you for all that good and hard work that you do.
Jenny
There is an article on Connect, regarding the relay, which also contains the links. So if you want to go to the Connect site, I'll be posting that and various team sites as well. But if you want to go to the Connect site and search for Relay, you should be able to get to that article. And again, it contains all the links that we just talked about in the email from.
William Krieger
So if you want to participate, or if you want to help, if you just want to be involved, or you just want to know about it, we can find all kinds of information here and Consumers Energy on our internal site through our emails through all the communication that goes on. But then if I'm listening to this podcast, and I'm not a Consumers Energy employee, I can find those things on the internet as well. And what was that website? Kym?
Kym
It's relayforlife.org. And then to get to our event, it's slash Jackson County, mi. If you get to Relay for Life dot org, you can search for the Jackson County Michigan event.
William Krieger
Alright. And there are events all over the country, right? If I'm reading this correctly, in the United States alone, 1.6 million people participate in this.
Kym
It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. Still, the number of people that do not know what Relay for Life Is that like, ooh, talking points, let's go. But it's just amazing. The amount of people is like, Oh, I wear my relay for life. I’m in public and they are like oh, you Relay too? And I'm like, Yes, I do.
William Krieger
It's like a little secret society, almost.
Kym
Yes, it is very passionate, caring people that rally around one cause.
William Krieger
Which is if you if you think about maybe the way some things are today, people can't agree on whether they should have eggs or oatmeal for breakfast without arguing. But we can all agree to kind of rally behind this and help out because not only in the United States that there's so many people but across the globe, 2.5 million participants, which is a small percentage of the population of the planet, but really a large number of people all agreeing that this is something that we certainly want to get behind and fight against.
Kym
It's a big draw when you have people that want to celebrate survivors, and then to as someone who has lost somebody to this disease, you feel a support when you show up, you may feel completely alone in the world. But you show up here, and you hear people, and you see everybody just rallied like we're setting up camp sites, and we're setting up activities, and we're announcing things and we've got music going on. Like nothing else matters that 24 hour, nothing else matters, you will be completely a part of our world. And that's, I think, the biggest draw to a Relay for Life event.
William Krieger
You kind of walk away from that. And I would liken it to being in the National Guard, right? You come back from summer camp. And you're like, we're all my friends go. Right. So you leave a relay event. And I've got to imagine for a couple of days, you're like, Oh, we're all those people that I was hanging out with.
Jenny
But it is very refreshing and very uplifting all the way around, regardless of your purpose for being there.
William Krieger
Well, and so Jenny, I'm going to ask you this question. And I didn't talk about this ahead of time. So you know, take your time answering it. What? Why do you do this? What? What is it that brought Jenny to the Relay for Life?
Jenny
Okay, so I have been involved in Relay for Life since 2001, not nearly as long as Kym. And in 1994, I lost my dad to pancreatic cancer. And I also lost a sister to breast cancer that same year. And then in 1989, I lost another sister to breast cancer. And then in 2017, I lost a brother to liver cancer. So cancer is very, very prevalent in my world. And this is my way of fighting. I also have a sister who is a survivor. And I honor her and applaud her and stay in touch, obviously, but all those ways to honor those who've gone before me and to hope that nobody else does.
William Krieger
All right. I'm very sorry for your losses on all of those counts. That's, that's tough, but thank you for being willing to share that with the audience. Kym, so you're the real veteran here because you've been doing this for a long time. What drew you to Relay for Life?
Kym
So, we call this our why, right? What's your why? So my family started our team due to our uncle, who had a diagnosis and was gone in two months, that was so new to us. At that time, we didn't even like you didn't have any time to react, you didn't know what it was. It was quick, it was over it was what just happened. So we jumped on this Relay for Life bandwagon. It was in Chelsea, and then we moved to Jackson County. And we just never stopped. From then, till now, we've lost some other family members. We have several survivors on our family, within our family. Our I, my family has a team, we're called the Parker Framily. Because we are now more than just family members, we have adopted people along the way that either once had a team or have been impacted and don't have a team. And so we just kind of keep bringing people with us. And I think, just as important as us relaying, because of our family members that we've lost in our survivors. We keep pulling people along with us. So we stay active in this because they rely on us. I mean, they like it, they enjoy it, we're going to keep going, we need it. And I just feel like that's our that's our biggest why right now. Our fights not over. People need us to keep relaying. And this is what we're going to do.
William Krieger
Well, I think it goes back to what you were saying in the beginning, right? This isn't over until no one has to hear those words again, you have cancer. That's, that makes complete sense. And two different stories, but very motivational. And you know, the important thing too is that, you know, with a lot of things, it seems like there's this core group that kind of keep it going and then it just sorts of fizzles out that hasn't happened here because this has been going on as for as long as I can remember. And it sounds like with what both of you do. Not only are you continuing on with your passion, but you're bringing other people in so that that will carry on those times where you're just not able to do it. Right.
Kym
And I think both with our event and with the team, we've seen highs and lows. I mean, Jackson County has been recognized years in a row for being one of the largest events in our I think we're more than a tri state area. Now. The North Central region, Jackson County is one of the largest events when we get recognition. At one point in time were $400,000 raised, which sounds small compared to some of the big things, big picture events. But for Jackson County, that was huge. We had 600 survivors signed up, we were raising $400,000 We had I mean it was just amazing. And we've seen it dropped down, mainly due to the pandemic, but fundraisers also do that they kind of dip and then they raise. So this year, we're starting on an up-cline again, being back from a pandemic, people will be more excited about things. So I'm just excited to see where the Jackson County goes.
William Krieger
So does Jackson County have a goal in mind.
Kym
We do I believe right now, our is $222,000, just because it's 2022. We had to capture that.
William Krieger
No, I liked that it Do you have like a goal set for the number of participants, as well? Are you just kind of set that goal in a dollar amount?
Kym
No, we have goals for everything. So and I'm probably going to get this wrong. And Katie and Casey Oh, forgive me people when you hear this, but we have a survivor goal. And I want to say that like, gosh, I don't, it's all going to center around the 22 I think we had a goal of 52 teams, just because of how small we've gotten. And they want to say like our survivor goal might be 222 just because the number of people the number of participants has dropped but you know, you can sign up as a survivor on that website. You don't have to come out you can sign up for the recognition for the information for whatever, but we would love for those folks that sign up to obviously come out and enjoy the event with us. So the more you sign up, the more we have the more fun the more reason that we have. So yeah.
William Krieger
Well important to you don't you don't necessary you don't have to you don't have to give money to participate. You don't have to show up necessarily to participate. There's lots of ways to help out this cause. So I would urge everyone to go out to that website and check it out. So we kind of talked about Jackson County. But Jenny, what are our goals for the team here at Consumers Energy?
Jenny
Well, I was very timid this year because last year was my first year as Co-captain. And it was a struggle to say the least. Many didn't even know it was happening in person. I was just a little bit busy and didn't advertise very well or market very well. All of that has changed this year. So rather than get super overconfident, I set it at $1,000. But thanks to Amanda's email that's already been surpassed. So I'm pretty sure we're going to go for probably $2022. At least
Kym
You'll reach it. Yeah. They're currently at $1500. Okay, so and that was, I mean, it's been creeping up daily, daily because of that amazing.
William Krieger
Well, let's just lay down the gauntlet for our friends here its Consumers Energy, I think you're going to reach $2022. No problem. Why not $20,022. Right. Why not? Why not put it why not put it out there and see what happens.
Kym
It could happen. How about everybody that listens to our podcast, go to the link and donate $22? Yes, let me let let's how many $22 donations we get for this? That would be amazing. Because
William Krieger
Because here's the thing, folks, is that on a normal month, we get about 1000 listeners. Last month, we had 1800 listeners in this month already, we're at 2200. listeners. So yes, if everyone out there who is able, who is listening to this would donate 22 bucks to this event, we would really surpass our goal. So throwing it out there to everyone. Go out to the web, if you if you are at Consumers Energy, go out to our internal website, look for those links that Amanda had sent out. If you are listening to this, and you're not a consumer’s employee, but you feel motivated to be a donor or to do something for this event. Go out to that Jackson County website or the Relay for Life. Relay for life.org. Let's not forget that head out there and make your donation that way as well. So, as happens very often on this podcast, we are coming up on time. But before we go, I'd like each of you to tell me what you want our audience to take away from our conversation today. So Jenny, I'm going to let you go first. What would you like our audience to take away from this?
Jenny
Um, I don't know anybody that hasn't been touched by cancer, on some level with some relative or friend. And I'm working in my team, and everybody that I know that's working towards this fundraiser is working. So I don't think that I will experience in my lifetime, that we won't hear the word cancer again. But I would love to think that if you do hear the word cancer, it's not a death sentence, that we have treatments that we we've already come miles and miles in the treatments that are available. But I would like to see no one die from cancer.
William Krieger
Well, thank you for that, Jenny.
Kym
I think my, my takeaway that I'd like blue listeners to have would be that we come together as those people that want to make a difference. In whatever facet of life, this one happens to be surrounded by cancer. And like Jenny said, we all know somebody, whether it's ourselves, whether it's our partners, whether it's our best friends or coworkers. Cancer is only one degree away. So let's do what we can. Let's come together and celebrate. That's the biggest thing if you come together and celebrate what we're, what we've done, where we've come. cancer deaths have declined. The fundraising is just the tip of the iceberg. And those dollars that we fundraise go to education. They go to patient programs, rides to the hospitals, places to stay while you're receiving treatment, the 20 or 24/7 phone number that anybody can call that money that we raise It helps those programs for anybody anywhere. So my takeaway is, get involved. However, that seems to fit for you get involved, go out to the website, relayforlife.org. If you're an employee, contact Jenny or me or Heidi, and just be involved, it makes a difference.
William Krieger
All right, I like that be involved, make a difference. And you both said it so eloquently that you'd be hard pressed to talk with someone who has not been impacted by cancer. And the other thing is, you can go out to the website, and you can see where these dollars are going. There's no question that this goes to a good cause to do a lot of good things. So again, if you're out there listening, the challenge is, you know, $22 donation, or show up or both. It would be awesome to see you out there. It was great sitting here talking with the two of you and getting to know you and very excited for this this year. And let's do this again next year.
Kym
Absolutely. Keep it is going. Keep the motivation keep the kids affordable. Yes. Thank you so much for the opportunity, though.
Jenny
Thank you. Really appreciate it.
William Krieger
Thank you to the audience for listening in today. The Me You Us podcast is proudly sponsored by Consumers Energy leaving Michigan better than we found it. Remember, you can find the Me You Us podcast on all major podcasting platforms. So be sure to go out find us and subscribe. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please contact the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. That's 1-800-273-8255 If you are a veteran or know a Veteran who is in crisis, you can call 1-800-273-8255 and press one for the Veterans Crisis Line. And remember to tune in every Wednesday, as we talk about the things that impact your personal wellbeing.