Fundraising runner raises sights skywards
Api Theodore has spent much of this year pounding pavements across Northland to raise funds and awareness for health causes but this time she wants her campaign to go sky high.
The sprightly 65-year-old grandmother will spend every day for the next week running around Kensington Park in Whangarei to raise awareness and funds for the rescue helicopter during Northland Emergency Services Trust's annual appeal.
A health promoter, Ms Theodore is not only taking a week's annual leave from her job with Northland District Health Board, she has pledged to donate a week's's salary to the cause, too.
She hopes at-homers, parents-with-littlies or shift workers - anyone who can - will join her to walk laps with her during the days, but if anyone wants to step up the pace and when she's on her own, she'll be running, she said.
Ms Theodore starts her regime today and intends to be at the park from 9am and during what would normally be an eight-hour work day.
She is encouraging companies, organisations, service groups and schools to make up teams, and individuals as well, to join her after work to do some laps.
In May she received a hero's welcome at the Town Basin as she walked the last leg of a 488km hikoi around Northland to raise awareness of cancer, in which she raised over $13,000 for a new oncology unit in Whangarei.
In September she ran from Warkworth to Whangarei to support teenage cancer charity CanTeen's annual appeal and last month took part in the Kassius 500 series of walks to help disabled 3-year-old Kassius Hepi's family buy a wheelchair-friendly vehicle.
