'We'll continue to keep helping women': Swig's Save the Cups campaign surpasses $100,000 goal

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ST. GEORGE — During five months of chemotherapy, a surgery and five weeks of radiation, the last thing on St. George resident Cassandra Kunde's mind was money. It wasn't until after she defeated breast cancer that she realized she didn't have a way to pay her medical bills.

Enter Swig, the St. George-based soda and sweets drive-thru chain, whose Save the Cups campaign has paid for life-saving surgeries for women across Utah and Arizona.

Save the Cups was launched in October as a way to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month and help women with breast cancer pay for their removal surgeries. The campaign surpassed its original goal of $50,000 in less than two weeks, according to the campaign's website, and since October has raised $161,582. The money has paid for the surgeries of a dozen women between Salt Lake City and Phoenix.

"As it started to get toward the end of the year, I was starting to stress about how we might come up with (the money)," Kunde said. "You don't really think about it when you're going through the treatment. You're just trying to get by."

Swig partnered with surgical centers in St. George and northern Utah to identify women who need help paying for their procedures. Save the Cups recipients don't have to go looking for the assistance, and in cases like Kunde's, they don't even know they're eligible until the hospital has gone over their paperwork.