Laurence Segal has seen too many friends and family members suffer from breast cancer: his mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, his girlfriend’s mother and even a famous former co-worker.
Segal, of DeWitt, used to work for the television game show “The Price Is Right.” The show’s announcer, Rod Roddy, was diagnosed with prostate, colon and male breast cancer and died in 2003.
Since 2012, Segal has been fighting back against the disease that affects more than 3 million Americans each year. His weapons? Bottles and cans. Segal’s goal is to collect 1 million bottles and cans and donate the 5-cent deposits — which add up to $50,000 — to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund.
“For all the people in my family, for Rod, for all the people I met at the fair, for all the hundreds of thousands of women going through it … It’s not a disease that’s affecting people at 40 anymore,” Segal said. “It’s affecting young people, it’s affecting black and white, it’s affecting people all over the country, all over the world.”
Segal’s “Bottles for a Cure” campaign began three years ago when he worked for the Syracuse Chiefs. Disgusted by the number of recyclable bottles and cans he saw fans throw into the garbage, Segal vowed to donate any returnables he could find to the Baldwin fund. So far, he’s collected 250,000 bottles and cans, including 35,000 from his stint at the Baldwin booth at the State Fair.
“I’m getting there,” Segal said.
Segal isn’t alone in his efforts. He’s worked out partnerships with Destiny USA, Delta Sonic Car Wash in Fairmount, Bottle’s End in Solvay and even the New York State Comptroller’s office. He’s had customers hand over their deposit receipts at Wegmans, and a group of children at the state fair dug bottles and cans out of the trash and brought them to the pink recycling can outside the Baldwin fund’s booth.
“I love that people are getting it. Just the fact that there’s now 600 likes on Bottles for a Cure [on Facebook] shows me that people are growing it,” Segal said.
Segal’s efforts aren’t just benefiting breast cancer research. He also removes the pop tabs from cans to donate to the Ronald McDonald House.
“A lot of people make fun of me at Wegmans when they see me doing it, but it’s important to those kids battling cancer,” he said.
While he’s a quarter of the way to his goal, Segal said he won’t stop at a million.
“If people are dying, the job isn’t done,” he said. “Every bottle is 5 cents going to research.”
According to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund’s website, findacure.org, the foundation has awarded 72 research grants totaling more than $4 million. The Baldwin fund is also partners with Upstate Medical University, which hosts Upstate Cancer Center.
“We should be grateful and fortunate that we have something so good here,” Segal said of Upstate Cancer Center.
To learn more about Bottles for a Cure, like its page on Facebook or contact Laurence Segal at [email protected] or 530-7674.
