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NORTH STONINGTON, Conn. (AP) — Deb McGowan is up-front about her addiction. When she sees discarded cans and bottles on the side of the roadway, she can't walk past without retrieving them.
And when she's driving down a rural road and spots a couple of tossed cans, she makes a detour to get them.
"Really, it's almost an addiction," said McGowan. "Especially if I see more than one, I pull over to get them. Every can is another nickel."
Over the past year, McGowan, 47, has redeemed 10,000 beverage containers to raise her $500 fundraising commitment for the ninth annual Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation Walk Across Southeastern Connecticut.
It's the eighth time that McGowan will participate, and the seventh time that she will walk the full 26.2-mile course.
"I just love the organization and (the fact) that 100 percent of the money raised goes to research," said McGowan. "I think, what if they ever do find a cure and it is because some of the money raised did come from crushed cans - from recycling? I just love that."
This is the first year that McGowan fulfilled her fundraising commitment by collecting and redeeming bottles and cans. But a year ago, while she was training for the 2013 walk, the idea took hold when she realized how many discarded beverage containers she was walking past every day.
"That's when I had my 'aha' moment," said McGowan, explaining it was then that she decided to raise her funds for the 2014 walk by collecting roadside litter.
"I was very motivated to clean up the roads and to donate the money to a cause I believe in. I see it as a win-win," she said.
But once the plan was concocted, McGowan did some simple math and realized to net $500 a nickel at a time, she would have to redeem 10,000 beverage containers.
She walks almost daily, but even on Mondays, a prime collection day, especially for discarded beer cans, a good haul on her 2-mile morning route typically yields about 10 cans. On weekends, when she sometimes goes for a 15-mile trek, she and walking partners Kate Parenteau and Linda Stefanski, all of North Stonington, can fill six bags full by the halfway point. McGowan leaves the bags along the way and drives back later to collect them.
But soon after launching the initiative, McGowan admits she had doubts about being able to find that many discarded containers. That's when her friends stepped up, spreading the word that McGowan was collecting cans and bottles to help fund breast cancer research and would welcome donations.
Soon, a steady stream of bags and bins of bottles and cans started showing up in her yard. All told, McGowan estimates that she collected about half the bottles and cans - 5,000 - and family, friends and strangers donated the balance to her.
"I just can't believe how generous people are," she said, adding that one day a man who saw her picking up containers along the roadside stopped to ask what she was doing and returned with four big bags of cans.
She has even recruited her husband, Charlie, who picks up cans when he's walking, and has taken her non-redeemable or crushed cans to a scrap metal facility that pays him 20 cents a pound.
McGowan also looks for loose change and bills - one day she found two twenties - and adds that to her TBBCF fund. And if she can't find bottles, cans or cash, she picks up debris and gets it to a proper receptacle.
A bookkeeper who works in Point Judith, R.I., McGowan said after doing the walk marathon so many years in succession she didn't want to ask family and friends to donate anymore and liked the idea of combining litter collection with fundraising.
The most popular tossed container, she said, is a Budweiser can. And her typical reward when she takes two or three bags to the redemption center at a local supermarket is about $12 to $15.
But over the year, those small amounts have added up to help McGowan meet her goal.
She's looking forward to marathon day, Oct. 4, when she will walk the 26.2-mile course with her regular group of friends again.
"... it's always a moving and special day," said McGowan. "We enjoy the entire day, and most of all, we enjoy sitting down at Harkness Park (in Waterford) at the end of the walk to celebrate our day and to share the good feelings of the event with all of the other walkers."
McGowan's bottle money will go into the fund this year that has since 2006 awarded $2.7 million in grants to 27 scientists working on a cure for breast cancer.
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On the net: www.tbbcf.org
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