Nearly a quarter of a million dollars has been donated to fight cancer thanks to the Rock N Ride in Washington County. The fifth annual Rock N Ride was held and raised nearly $40,000 with some donations still coming in. David Friese who helped organize the event in honor of Kim Friese and Karen Van Osdol applauds the community for the efforts to fight cancer by raising funds.

He says some of those funds have helped the Holden Cancer Center at the University of Iowa with drug trials, “At our banquet Dr. Zakharia Yousef came and spoke and one of the trials that they’re using, they went to Pfizer and asked for the sponsorship of this trial, and Pfizer asked them to fund it internally. So they used Rock N Ride’s donations to get this trial going. And it’s helping, I think he said 19 people, are on this drug trial. And it showed enough benefit that they went back to Pfizer and showed them their work, and then Pfizer put up another $600,000 to continue the drug trial. So it lists us right there as one of the chief sponsors. And the reason why this trial is going, and for those 19 people it’s a really, really big deal. … Everything has a building block, and you’ve got to start somewhere, and you never know what trial is going to be the thing that opens it up.”

Friese encourages people to take part in next summer’s sixth annual Rock N Ride with the bicycle ride to Riverside and back, the jog, or the banquet. It’ll be the second weekend in July.