Round up your checkout total at HyVee this weekend to help Quincy to Peoria St. Jude Run

July 7, 2021 | By Muddy River News

QUINCY — HyVee stores at 3700 Broadway and 1400 Harrison are joining other Hy-Vee stores across Central Illinois on Saturday and Sunday to raise funds for the 17th annual Quincy to Peoria St. Jude Run.

Customers will have the option to round up their totals in the checkout lanes, with the extra amount being donated to the Quincy run. St. Jude runners will be helping out at both stores from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday by bagging groceries and answering questions about the run.

The 2021 run is set for July 16-17. It’s a 135-mile, 24-hour relay-style run to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. Runners will leave at 3 p.m. Friday, July 16, from 5^th and Vermont in Quincy. More than 50 runners and volunteers – all vaccinated – are making the trek to Peoria. Several others are participating in a virtual event in their communities.

This year’s run is in memory of Becky Meehan, a longtime St. Jude Run supporter who lost her life to cancer in February. Her family and friends will help send off the runners on Friday afternoon.

Runners and volunteers have raised $1,383,547 since the run’s inception. Each runner must raise $1,000 to participate, and all funds raised go directly to St. Jude.

This run is one of dozens of Illinois and Missouri satellite events that run into Peoria to celebrate the arrival of Memphis to Peoria runners and present our fundraising total at the annual St. Jude Telethon.

St. Jude aims to find cures and save children with pediatric cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases. The organization freely shares its breakthroughs with doctors and scientists worldwide. The treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since the hospital opened in 1962.

Families at St. Jude never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing and food. Hospital operations are funded solely by donations.