RACE isn't just a club. It's a way for me to give back the same way people gave to me.

Walton High School's (WHS) some 2,459 students began classes last week. But before that, leaders of RACE, the Marietta, Ga., high school's cancer-centered club, had already met and started laying plans for the months ahead.

RACE stands for Raiders (the school's mascot) Aspiring for Cancer Elimination. The group began as a (Cobb County) Relay For Life Team in 2000, said Vivian Baldwin, RN, adolescent health educator with Healthwise Developmental Education Specialists, Inc. Baldwin teaches children about tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, as well as sex education through Health classes at Walton.

She is also a board member of the American Cancer Society's (ACS) North Georgia Unit and has been involved with ACS for the past 15 years.

Two students, Matt Jacobs and Allison Taffel, were the driving force behind RACE, Baldwin said. Taffel's mother had ovarian cancer at the time.

"The kids were so touched by Relay," said Baldwin, "they wanted to start a group to raise awareness — not just to do Relay — and put an end to cancer," said Baldwin. The night of that year's Relay, the idea that became RACE was born.

Another person central to RACE was present that night — Diane Lijek, a community income manager in income development in the ACS' Marietta office. She's RACE's ACS advisor.

Lijek got involved with the Cobb Relay For Life, where she met Baldwin. "I was cochairman of Relay For Life," said Baldwin. "She came to us mid-Relay, but it was as though she'd been there all her life. She saw a need and she just filled it.

"She has a gift with young people," said Baldwin. "She really encourages them and they just love her to death."

Baldwin said she and Lijek "started talking about having a student ACS group or club at Walton, and Matt and Allison got excited. The rest is history."

Both Jacobs and Taffel graduated in 2001 and are now college sophomores. Jacobs went on to do an internship with the North Georgia Unit (Kennesaw) and returned to help with and participate in the Cobb County Relay For Life this past May, said Baldwin.

Richmond Parker, former French teacher, the high school's Web master, and faculty technical advisor, is also involved with RACE. Parker is one of the group's sponsors, along with Allison Wright, counselor. The role of sponsor was passed to Parker by Hester Vasconcelos, RACE's founding faculty member. Vasconcelos is an AP (advanced placement) Spanish teacher, head of the school's gifted department, and a cancer survivor.

During the first meetings of the year, the group plans activities and its focus for the year. RACE will recruit new members, and the group will try to locate kids with cancer at Walton, and in the elementary and middle schools that feed into Walton. Some of RACE's current members have cancer.

The members want to not only raise awareness of the disease, but to let the kids who have it know about facilities and services available to them through their local ACS, said Baldwin.

When a student in the Walton High community has been identified in the past, said Baldwin, the kids have had homerooms sign cards, they've baked cookies and brownies, and sometimes even brought meals to the homes. "And parents pitch in," Baldwin said, with cooking and driving.

During the school year the group will put up signs in the school and broadcast messages on the in-house televisions about cancer. And they'll do fundraising. For last year's Cobb Relay For Life they set a goal of "$20,000, which they achieved," said Baldwin.

"They also did a 'Hats Off Day' for Camp Sunshine. You know how a high school kid will give anything to wear a hat," she said. On this day, the principal let kids wear a hat if they donated either a new hat, an old hat (that can be washed), or money.

Participants got to wear a hat — and a sticker saying the principal had OK'd their headgear. Others pitched in: parents offered to wash the "pre-owned" hats. The football team signed hats. The school raised $650 — and 250 hats.

"For me, RACE isn't just a club. It's a way for me to give back the same way people gave to me," said Trace Wilson, a student board member of RACE. "I am a cancer survivor. Without clubs like RACE and the ACS there is no telling where I would be today." Wilson, now a senior, has been cancer-free since his freshman year.

This year, the ACS may begin providing resources on the school's Web site. According to Baldwin, "It’s in the works." An executive committee comprised of Baldwin, Lijek, Parker, and Wright, and two students, Wilson and Jenni Berry, have had one planning meeting so far. They will guide RACE through the coming year.