Are you ready to Drives for Rides?

Bust out your golf clubs, the Sith Annual Drives for Rides benefitting the Emilio Nares Foundation is just around the corner! Drives for Rides is our annual chaity golf tournament benefitting the Emilio Nares Foundation. Richard and Diane Nares lost their only son, Emilio, to cancer when he was just 5-years-old. Turning tragedy into hope, the Nares family created the Emilio Nares foundation in Emilio's memory. Today, ENF provides a variety of programs and services for low-income, underprivileged families whose children are battling cancer, right here in San Diego. ENF’s flagship program, Ride With Emilio, is a transportation service dedicated to meeting the needs of low-income families whose children must access cancer treatment on time, but cannot due to a lack of transportation. The Ride With Emilio program has virtually eliminated missed appointments due to transportation challenges among the patients served. Last year alone Ride With Emilio’s vans traveled over 50,000 miles, providing over 4,500 rides for 250 patients (that’s over 162,000 hours spent driving!).

What started with helping families get to and from their children's cancer treatment appointments, has grown exponentially! ENF not only provides transportation to and from a child's cancer treatment appointments, they also prepare and distribute healthy snack packs for families whose children are receiving inpatient care, created and run a dedicated resource center on the grounds at Rady Children's Hospital, fostered a knitting group, patented a shirt to allow children receiving chemo via a portacath in their chest feel more comfortable, and when unfortunately needed, provides families with bereavement assistance. All of these programs are offered at no cost to the family.

Why we Drives for Rides

It is simple really. We Drives for Rides for families with kids like 2 year old Mykaela. Mykaela was diagnosed with leukemia last year just before her second birthday. Mykaela has been receiving chemotherapy twice a week, for almost a year. Her family doesn’t own a car and they travel with Ride with Emilio to all of her medical appointments. Mykaela's dad uses public transportation to get to his job, bringing all of his job equipment with him.

We Drives for Rides for families like Arturo’s. Aurtro was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia when he was only four years old. He is now eight years old, and has undergone a bone marrow transplant. Arturo depends on Ride With Emilio four times weekly to reach his scheduled treatment appointments from his home in Chula Vista. His family doesn’t own a car and it is unthinkable for Arturo to use public transportation, as even common cold germs could become a life-threatening illness. Ride With Emilio is a direct weapon in Arturo’s battle to conquer cancer.

In the past 5 years, the Drives for Rides Tournament has raised almost $200,000 for ENF, 100% which has gone towards supporting the programs they provide. Every year we seek to do more, to raise more, and our Sith Annual Drives for Rides is no exception. Sure, putting on a golf tournmanet takes a lot of work, but boy is it worth it! Ok, by now you might be asking me, "don't you mean Sixth?" Great question! While this year marks our sixth year, Drives for Rides happens to fall on May the Fourth. When we found that out, we knew there we had to drop that X, and join the Darkside (they have golf!)

Ready to join the DarkSide and Support ENF?

You can golf! You can donate! You can sign up to be a sponsor! Or maybe you know someone who would be interested in golfing, or donating, or sponsoring! Still not sure what you can do, spread the word and share my blog!

Looking forward to see you at the Sith Annual Drives for Rides benefitting the Emilio Nares Foundation on May the Fourth!

Thank you to our Sith Annual Drives for Rides Donors!

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