Visiting Angels Team in Eureka Raises Over $100,000 to Fight Alzheimer’s

EUREKA, Calif. (KIEM) – The Visiting Angels team in Eureka not only just finished 6^th place nation-wide for raising the most money to fight Alzheimer’s, but also won an award for having the largest team.

The team is now being awarded an additional $10,000  from the Visiting Angels CEO, which means the Humboldt County Walk to End Alzheimer’s has now raised $107,651.

Team member of Visiting Angels in Eureka, Lynn McKenna, expresses, “To raise the money that we raised and the bonus money…it’s amazing. Especially in this year with the pandemic, so as we’ve said before, we just have an incredibly generous community in this area that supports worthy causes.”

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 3,000 people in Humboldt and Del Norte counties suffer from the disease. Also, more than 5.8 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s.

Executive Director of Visiting Angels in Eureka, Jeanne O’Neale, reminds, “The Walk to end Alzheimer’s happens once a year in Humboldt County…but Alzheimer’s is a disease that people live with 24 hours a day. So the fundraising needs to happen 24 hours a day.”

There are more than 15 million family and friends that provide care to people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias in the United States. In fact, there are more than 630,000 people living with the disease and 1,600,000 caregivers in just California alone.

Care-giver, Ellen Durfee, says the hardest part is to see them slowly change, as she states, “He [My husband] has trouble remembering who I am and that hurts. I understand it, but the 20^th of this month we would’ve been married for 56 years and for him to ask someone who I am is just something that you never figured would happen.”

Alzheimer’s is the 6^th leading cause of death in the United States and the only disease within the top 10 that cannot be cured, prevented or even slowed.