Every year, KGO Radio staged a 24-hour on-air charity drive to fund leukemia research. In 30 years, the Leukemia Cure-A-Thon raised over 20-million-dollars to fight the disease.

The broadcast took extraordinary effort with musicians and entertainers booked throughout the day and night. Phone banks were set up and tote boards rented. Catering and security were planned.

The biggest need was enough on-air talent to fill 24 non-stop hours without commercials. Our sister television station showed some of it live. Personalities from other radio and television stations made appearances. It was a remarkable effort from the highly-competitive media corps.

Everyone on the staff was expected to help out. Part of the newsroom’s contribution was to produce a multi-part series of reports to run in all the newscasts in the week leading up to the ‘Thon. It wasn’t a very desirable assignment because the information was important, but dry. Medical breakthroughs and increasing survival rates were good stories to tell, but it was difficult to make the reports interesting.

When it was my turn, I took a different approach and focused all my reporting on one person — a victim — 16 year old Sarah Liu. Her struggle with the disease drove home the importance of funding research in a way no doctor ever could.