Caregivers and family members of people lost to Alzheimer’s disease or dementia joined the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Ottawa Metro Park Saturday to raise money for research.
Photo by Mackenzi Klemann | The Lima News
LIMA — Advancing Alzheimer’s research is personal for Danica Basinger.
The manager for Lima’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s, which returned to Ottawa Metro Park Saturday, learned the horrors of dementia when her grandmother succumbed to the disease years earlier.
An estimated 7 million Americans and 236,000 Ohioans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, which is now the seventh-leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Basinger became one of the millions of unpaid caregivers working on the front lines of dementia, but the experience inspired her to become a professional caretaker.
She’s now working toward a cure by organizing Saturday’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s for the Northwest Ohio chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, a nonprofit raising money for Alzheimer’s care and research into potential cures for the disease.
“They’ve created a community for people who are living with this disease because it’s an alienating disease,” Basinger said. “People tend to feel alone. We want people to know you are not alone. There’s a community of people here who are going through the same thing.”
That community gathered in Ottawa Metro Park Saturday morning for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s. Thirty-one teams consisting of 98 people, many of them caregivers and family members of those lost to dementia, walked through the park to show their support for one another.
Saturday’s event is one of eight walks planned this month by the Northwest Ohio chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, which has raised nearly $20,000 toward its $42,000 goal for the year.
