Bigger impact in Year 2 for Busch's program

Successful dinner brings support — and hope — to breast cancer ‘champions’

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Last year at this time, Kyle and Samantha Busch held the inaugural Project Pink Party to help raise funds to support breast cancer treatment in North Carolina.

The Buschs, through the Kyle Busch Foundation, supported Pretty in Pink, a foundation started by Dr. Lisa Tolnitch, a surgeon dedicated to helping women and men in need who were suffering from breast cancer. The fundraiser was just the first step in giving; Kyle won the NASCAR Nationwide Series event at Charlotte Motor Speedway and donated the earnings to the project.

That’s how you start off with a bang.

On Wednesday night, at the elegant 5 Church bar and eatery, the second version took place to a packed house of 150, and the mood in the room was nothing short of ebullient.

“The first year, there was some apprehension about what it was all about, what it was going to do, how successful it was going to be, but since we got everything done, it’s been huge,” Kyle Busch said. “People wanting to come back and get involved and this year … we’re sold out. We have 150 people here tonight, and they are helping us all be successful in the second year.”

Last year, 12 women from North Carolina were selected as champions, and all attended the Nationwide Series race as part of the Project Pink contingent. This year, Samantha Busch reported, there will be 16, including the first male champion.

“This year we have 16 in the greater Charlotte area for whom we’re going to be covering their medical expenses,” she said. “We’ll be telling them Friday night at the race track.”

For Tolnitch, the partnership with the KBF and the Buschs is a wonderful tool to help Pretty in Pink achieve its goals.

“It’s huge,” she said. “Just from a purely financial standpoint, they raise a lot of money and we can turn that into help for a lot of women and men who need it for breast cancer. Their name going with it is a really big boost for us.

“All the money we get in goes right back out, to take care of folks, and I am very focused on keeping our overhead low so we spend most of our money on care for the patients. The need appears to be growing, not getting less. That’s our biggest challenge.”

The list of supporters is impressive. Delegations from Toyota, Monster Energy, Sprint, Interstate Batteries, Joe Gibbs Racing, Mars Chocolate North America, C.F. Parks & Company, Dollar General and NASCAR filled the room.

Tolnitch’s foundation has opened an office here in Charlotte, in addition to the offices in Raleigh, and the western part of the state needs their help. “Once you get out of Charlotte, which is pretty affluent, there’s a lot of poverty in this end of the state,” she said. “Going west from here, there’s almost no medical care. It’s huge. We’re hoping to be in every county.

“Everything costs more all the time. If you were going to take care of breast cancer, the average cost is $300,000. Most of the physicians that we work with donate their care, so we take care of the drugs for chemotherapy and the hospital part, which is big. We can turn a dollar into many, many dollars because of how people are working with us as a foundation.”

Kelly Sink, the champion in attendance, said that she was chosen last year at a pretty dire time.

“I didn’t have health insurance, and I applied to Pretty in Pink for some assistance,” Sink said. “They had chosen 12 champions, and I was one of them. I couldn’t believe it. I’m a NASCAR fan, and that’s one of the reasons I moved to Charlotte. That night, when we were at the track, everything they did … the best word I can use to describe it is magical.”

Samantha Busch said Sink’s story was the reason she and Kyle do this.

“We kept up all year, and we got to see the relief picked up off their shoulders from not having those medical bills and not having to decide about how they’re going to pay which bill. She’s kept in touch with me, saying we’re able to focus on getting better and not worry about having to pay for this, this or that. We knew we were going to have to do this every year.”

Win, lose or draw on Friday night, Pretty in Pink and the Project Pink program will be better off for Wednesday’s event.

“Pretty in Pink goes so far above and beyond just covering their medical bills,” Samantha Busch said. “They have wellness programs, friendship programs, they’re really an all-encompassing group. They let us dive in as much as we want, and we’re going to have a mammogram unit at JGR because of them, and at Toyota Pit Pass there are going to be displays teaching women how to do self-exams. There are so many things they want to do with us, and they were so on-board. They were just a perfect fit.”

For more information on the Pretty in Pink Foundation, visit their website at www.prettyinpinkfoundation.org, and to see what the Kyle Busch Foundation is up to, visit www.KyleBuschFoundation.org.

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