A bidder raises their bidding card high in to the air during the Pink on the Dirt fundraiser and auction at the Ford Idaho Center, Wednesday, July 20, 2022. The annual event, hosted by Stampede for the Cure, celebrates breast cancer survivors and raises money to fund mammograms for people in need.
A bidder raises their bidding card high in to the air during the Pink on the Dirt fundraiser and auction at the Ford Idaho Center, Wednesday, July 20, 2022. The annual event, hosted by Stampede for the Cure, celebrates breast cancer survivors and raises money to fund mammograms for people in need.
NAMPA — It’s been almost 12 years since Dawn Doepke sat in a room at the St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute listening to her diagnosis: breast cancer.
Now, years later as a survivor, she attends the Pink on the Dirt luncheon at the Idaho Center in Nampa each year. Pink on the Dirt is held by the Snake River Stampede Rodeo and is a fundraiser hosted by Stampede for the Cure to celebrate breast cancer survivors and raise money to fund mammograms for people in need.
For Doepke, getting an early mammogram is what changed her life.
“I went for the mammogram, they’re like, ‘We need to see you back here the next day,’” she said. “I go back the next day, they throw the cancer diagnosis at me and I just kind of walked out of MSTI and I was like, ‘WTF just happened here?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t even know who to call.’”
The following year turned out to be a “whirlwind” that Doepke can’t even put into words.
But one thing stands out: Pink on the Dirt. Doepke said she hadn’t heard of the event or of Stampede for the Cure until that year when her friend Rhonda McMurtrie invited her to go.
For the first time since her diagnosis, Doepke said she felt like breast cancer wasn’t being treated as a death sentence. She felt uplifted and celebrated.
Do you LOVE local news? Get Local News Headlines in your inbox daily.
Thanks! You'll start receiving
the headlines tomorrow!
She hasn’t missed a year since.
This year, the luncheon featured raffles and a live auction. Scores of men and women dressed in pink filled tables set up on the dirt of the rodeo arena, all waiting for the chance to bid.
According to Lynn Calvin, an executive director for the rodeo, the goal for Wednesday was to raise $150,000.
The money raised will go to the St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus hospitals to provide mammograms for the uninsured and underinsured, Calvin said.
Mammograms are one of the most common tools in breast cancer detection.
Doepke said she was putting off her mammogram when something started to feel amiss. Because she went in and got screened, the doctors were able to catch the cancer early. Now, she’s a huge advocate for mammograms.
“If anything seems out of the ordinary, I don’t care if they say you’re too young for a mammogram, that’s when you should be utilizing like the funding for the mammogram buses and stuff and going in and getting it if you don’t have insurance, because man oh man, it’s life changing,” Doepke said.
Sydney Kidd oversees and reports for the Kuna Melba News and Meridian Press weeklies, in addition to her reporting and editing duties for the Idaho Press. She is a graduate of Utah State University and holds a degree in journalism. Previously, Kidd completed internships with Boise Weekly and Deseret News. A true Boise girl, she is happy to be working for a newspaper that serves the area she grew up in. In her free time, Kidd enjoys water and snow sports, discovering new food joints with her husband and occasionally running away to the ocean.
