PORT ANGELES — A poker run is scheduled for Sunday to help Nancy Merrigan of Port Angeles with medical costs incurred during her battle with a rare neuroendocrine cancer.
The run begins at 11 a.m. at the Lower Elwha Food and Fuel and ends at 5 p.m. at HJ Carroll Park in Chimacum and is open to those who will travel in motorcycles or other motor vehicles.
Registration is $30 for a five-card hand, $15 for an additional hand and $5 for one card. Raffle tickets also are on sale for $5 each, three for $10 or eight for $20.
Merrigan is a mother of five children and grandmother of 15. All of Merrigan’s children and their families live in the area and have put their energies into organizing the poker run for the last four weeks, family members said.
“My family has worked hard on the whole thing,” Merrigan said.
Her son-in-law, Padraic Irwin, came up with the original idea for a poker run.
“I really thought it was a neat idea Padric had,” said Nicole Merrigan, Nancy’s daughter, who helped organize the event. “Everyone wanted to do it.”
In the poker run, a person will be given a paper that is called their hand. At the next stop — Joshua’s Restaurant and Lounge — participants draw one card out of 52 in a paper bag. The card is noted and initialed on their hand. These actions are repeated at each of the next four stops.
Once all hands are filled out they are compared, and the best three hands will win prizes.
In addition to the poker run, the family has organized a raffle, with a number of prizes donated by local businesses.
The family is hoping for a big turnout, as Nancy Merrigan had to take leave of her job as the general manager at Quality Inn and Suites in Sequim, and her cancer is “aggressive and grows quickly,” Nicole said.
“She needs to see a specialist for her lifelong journey to ensure she has the proper treatment.”
A member of the Sequim-Dungeness Chamber of Commerce, Nancy Merrigan has over the years helped house patients of the Olympic Medical Cancer Center in Sequim.
“These were patients who needed treatments for multiple days but didn’t live locally to make it financially sustainable,” Nicole Merrigan said.
More information is available on Nancy’s Knocking Out Cancer Journey on Facebook.
