Local Teen Gets Active Online

By GABRIELLA BOCK | Reporter

Paul Revere Charter Middle School student Samantha Sinaiko celebrated her 13th birthday by helping a friend climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in East Africa.

Following her February bat mitzvah, the young philanthropist created a website that raised money to send Tiffany Donovan to Tanzania for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Climb2Cure:Kilimanjaro charity hike.

Donovan, who is a long time family friend of the Sinaiko family, decided to climb Kilimanjaro as a way to honor the family’s patriarch, Greg Sinaiko, who was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2015.

LLS has invested more than $1 billion in blood cancer research, approximately $67.7 million in 2015 alone. Over the last 15 years, the organization has funded near 40 percent of all new anti-cancer drugs and has spearheaded research and development for stem cell transplantation.

Sinaiko, who is healthy after seven months of chemotherapy, told the Palisadian-Post that his daughter’s motivation to help spread awareness for the disease has made him extremely proud.

After only two months of fundraising, Samantha helped raise over $18,000 to send Donovan on the trek of a lifetime.

With all proceeds going to the LLS for research, Donovan’s trip up the 19,341-foot-tall mountain was more than just a hike—every step taken helps the organization come closer to finding a cure for the blood diseases that more than 1.2 million people in North America are living with, or are currently in remission from.

These were the numbers on Donovan’s mind as she and the rest of her team made  summit on Africa’s tallest mountain on March 12, 2017.

The climb to the top took six days in total, a feat that Donovan said her four months of training in California had barely prepared her for.

“There were plenty of times where I began to question what I was doing,” Donovan told the Post. “The air was thin and it was difficult to breathe at times, but once we got to the top, all of that doubt went away. I couldn’t believe what I had just accomplished.”

Already planning her next challenge, Donovan aspires to climb to Mt. Everest’s base camp. But for now, she, Samantha and the rest of the Sinaiko tribe have brought their passion for hiking a little closer to home.

“We just held a community Climb2Cure hike right here in Temescal Canyon,” she revealed.

The event took 40 participants up the waterfall trail and back down before the team gathered at the family’s home for food, drinks and stories from Donovan’s incredible journey.

Up next, the family, along with Donovan as their guide, are planning and trip to summit California’s tallest climb: Mt. Whitney.