Climbing stairs for charity to replace 'rubber chicken' dinners?
All too often, nonprofits default to bland, overpriced banquets in order to raise cash. Nicole Ring, the assistant director of development at the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA, calls them "rubber-chicken dinners."
The better alternative, Ring said, is the YMCA's annual Stair Climb to the Top fundraiser, which took place Friday afternoon.
This year's event attracted about 2,000 fitness-conscious folks from Los Angeles and others flying in specifically for the fundraiser.
For the stair climb's 16th anniversary, participants paid a $100 entry fee and asked friends to donate toward the YMCA's community programs. The players then raced up the 75 flights of stairs in the U.S. Bank Tower downtown. It's supposedly the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
"It's our biggest fundraiser of the year," Ring said. "It really brings together the downtown community."
In addition to avid YMCA members looking for a workout, the event draws local businesses, which use the team-focused challenge as a sort of camaraderie-training exercise.
For the second year in a row, a sector of the LAPD won the High Rise Hero coed division, said team captain Arnold Suzukamo, who works in the police's management analysis planning bureau.
Team Vertically Challenged was training since July and spent parts of last week climbing the 55 or so flights of stairs in the Wells Fargo building. The stairwell training helps to overcome the stuffiness and claustrophobia that inevitably kick in on game day.
"It gets pretty stifling in the stairwell," Suzukamo said.
Similar YMCA fundraisers take place at the Willis Tower (formally Sears Tower) in Chicago, the Space Needle in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York.
-- Mark Milian
Photo: Jeff Le Sage makes his way up 1,500 steps during a 75-story climb to the top of the U.S. Bank Tower for the YMCA's annual fundraising event to benefit programs of the Stuart M. Ketchum branch in downtown Los Angeles. Photo credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times
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