It’s an awfully long walk to Burbank, Calif., but Leah Cairns is hopeful she can generate enough people power to “virtually” walk two young girls from their homes in B.C. and North Carolina to The Ellen DeGeneres Show studio.
Cairns, a North Vancouver resident and actress known for her role as Lt. Margaret “Racetrack” Edmondson on TV’s Battlestar Galactica, has organized an event called I Walk 4 Savannah and Seattle. On Feb. 8 and 9, she invites people around the world to walk, run or wheel a few miles and pledge their mileage towards a collective grand total. Cairns hopes the campaign will grab DeGeneres’s attention and the talk show host will invite Seattle Lennox and Savannah Greenawalt to be guests on her show.
“We need to walk the girls 3,765 miles, which is the combined distance from their homes to the Ellen show,” Cairns says.
Seattle, who is Cairns’ niece, lives in Kelowna, and Savannah, whose mother Cairns met at a Battlestar Galactica convention, lives in Charlotte, N.C. The two girls have never met, but they have a lot in common. Both are five years old and both were diagnosed with rare, incurable, life-threatening disorders shortly after their first birthdays.
Seattle has transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord. Despite doctors’ predictions, she learned to walk, but she still needs a wheelchair and will require surgeries on her legs, feet and likely her spine.
Savannah has mitochondrial disease, a condition that causes her to suffer from chronic bronchitis and fatigue. She uses oxygen at night when she sleeps.
In December 2013, Cairns launched a crowd-funding campaign on gofundme.com with a goal of raising $20,000 to help the girls’ families pay for medical expenses not covered by their insurance. Seattle needs a new wheelchair and Savannah needs a mobile oxygen tank. To date, the crowd-funding campaign has reached more than $12,000. Much of the donations have come from Battlestar Galactica fans, Cairns says, as the cast of the sci-fi show has helped spread the word.
“It’s far from what they will need over their lifetime,” Cairns says of the fundraising goal, “but it will definitely be a help to both sets of families.”
Because January and February are not the best months to solicit donations, Cairns hopes this weekend’s I Walk 4 Savannah and Seattle event will keep the momentum going. Participants are encouraged to take a photo of themselves holding a sign that indicates how many miles they contributed to the 3,765 mark, and then Tweet, Facebook or email that photo to DeGeneres and her producers.
Cairns says getting the girls on the daytime talk show will help raise awareness of their respective diseases, as well as the challenges faced by those whose medical expenses aren’t covered by insurance. It will also be a chance for the girls to meet for the first time.
For more information about the virtual walk, visit Facebook.com/Walk4SavannahSeattle.
