My Great Strides Story
Rachel Smith-Bolton
Fundraising for Glastonbury Great Strides 2026
Rachel Smith-Bolton
Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you for taking the time to visit my Great Strides page. This will be our seventeenth year walking for Great Strides! Unfortunately, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has closed the Central Illinois office and discontinued the Great Strides Walk in Champaign-Urbana. Therefore, Sarah and I are walking with my parents on May 30th in Glastonbury CT, where my mom has been leading a Strolling for Sarah team for years. Mom is our champion fundraiser - one of the top fundraisers in her chapter - and we are looking forward to joining her team! This walk may also be our last, given the absence of a local walk in IL and Sarah finishing high school next year.
Sarah is finishing her junior year at the University Laboratory High School. She is having a blast with the Thespian Club where she acted in Twelfth Night and has discovered that she enjoys being in the lighting and sound booth. Outside of school she earned her second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and continues to play the pipe organ. We have started thinking about colleges (gasp!) as senior year is right around the corner.
Sarah’s health has been strong and steady now that she is taking Trikafta. Trikafta is the new combination of three drugs created by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, with financial support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This therapy corrects the nonfunctional protein in many CF patients. Trikafta is not a cure, but it is a game changer, and it is what we have been working so hard toward.
As amazing as Trikafta is, there are still 10% of CF patients who cannot benefit from it, so the search continues for a therapy that will improve the health of all CF kids. You can see the pipeline of therapies in development here: https://apps.cff.org/trials/pipeline/
Please consider supporting a walker on our team. We are helping add tomorrows for those living with cystic fibrosis!
Thank you,
Rachel
Thank you for taking the time to visit my Great Strides page. This will be our seventeenth year walking for Great Strides! Unfortunately, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has closed the Central Illinois office and discontinued the Great Strides Walk in Champaign-Urbana. Therefore, Sarah and I are walking with my parents on May 30th in Glastonbury CT, where my mom has been leading a Strolling for Sarah team for years. Mom is our champion fundraiser - one of the top fundraisers in her chapter - and we are looking forward to joining her team! This walk may also be our last, given the absence of a local walk in IL and Sarah finishing high school next year.
Sarah is finishing her junior year at the University Laboratory High School. She is having a blast with the Thespian Club where she acted in Twelfth Night and has discovered that she enjoys being in the lighting and sound booth. Outside of school she earned her second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and continues to play the pipe organ. We have started thinking about colleges (gasp!) as senior year is right around the corner.
Sarah’s health has been strong and steady now that she is taking Trikafta. Trikafta is the new combination of three drugs created by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, with financial support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This therapy corrects the nonfunctional protein in many CF patients. Trikafta is not a cure, but it is a game changer, and it is what we have been working so hard toward.
As amazing as Trikafta is, there are still 10% of CF patients who cannot benefit from it, so the search continues for a therapy that will improve the health of all CF kids. You can see the pipeline of therapies in development here: https://apps.cff.org/trials/pipeline/
Please consider supporting a walker on our team. We are helping add tomorrows for those living with cystic fibrosis!
Thank you,
Rachel
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