Brookfield/Elm Grove Monthly

Page 2A • Freeman Brookfield & Elm Grove 262-542-2500 Hours: M-F 8 a.m.- 5 p.m. 801 N. Barstow St., P.O. Box 7, Waukesha, WI 53187 The FREEMAN How to reach us Established in 1859 Brookfield & Elm Grove T H I S M O N T H If you have a news tip from the Brookfield/Elm Grove area, contact Arthur Thomas at 513-2657 or news@conleynet.com To advertise in "Brookfield & Elm Grove This Month" call the advertising department at (262) 513-2624. 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Advertised rate may change without notice. Membership eligibility required. 251549002 247929023 The ABCD's of fighting cancer By Chris Bennett Special to The Freeman GLENDALE — The difference a friendly voice can make during a difficult time in one's life is extraordinary. The difference of a friendly voice in a woman's life fol- lowing a diagnosis of breast cancer is the reason ABCD exists. ABCD — After Breast Cancer Diagnosis — is a resource for those who are reeling from news that they are now living with breast cancer. The organization came to be in 1999, spearheaded largely by efforts from local television jour- nalist and anchorwoman Melodie Wilson. Wilson worked for Milwaukee's WTMJ and WITI, and died of breast cancer in 2009. Wilson and some friends founded ABCD to give women an outlet for peer-to-peer support. Every mentor at ABCD is either a cancer survivor or is living with cancer, which only increases the peer-to-peer connection. The sea- soned members help the new mem- bers adjust to life in a sorority no one ever wanted to join. The organization is based in Glendale, but is open to anyone in southeast Wisconsin and beyond. Information on the organization's website — www.abcdbreastcancer- support.org — points out that all you need to get help is a phone. From one who knows Waiting at the other end of the phone line will be a mentor like Jane Hathaway, a breast cancer sur- vivor who lives in Menomonee Falls. "I went through multiple proce- dures, and that's why I got involved using ABCD," Hathaway said. "I was introduced to ABCD early on. With the different kinds of proce- dures I was going through, I was able to reach out to different men- tors to help me in my journey." Hathaway learned of her diagno- sis in 2005 and went through treat- ment in 2006. She tried becoming a mentor as soon as she learned she was cancer-free, and was rebuffed in her efforts. Personnel at ABCD told her it was too soon. The wound was still raw. She needed time to heal. "I waited about a year, and reached out and said, 'What can I do?'" Hathaway said. "I went through mentor training to become a mentor. It's pretty comprehensive training." ABCD's efforts to help those cop- ing with breast cancer are steeped in methodology to ensure the pro- cess works for those who need it most. In addition to being a mentor, Hathaway now helps train new mentors. "This one-to-one model is truly personal," Executive Director Ginny Finn said. "We encourage people to seek out and get all the support they need." Finn said support needed might vary widely among those dealing with breast cancer, and is tailored to be as personal as possible. "If you have a 13-year-old who's acting out at home, we will find you another person with teenagers who acted out," Finn said. "If you'd love to have someone to talk to, but money is tight, we'll send you a phone card." Finn said the group will also re- match people, and said participants are encouraged to speak up if they feel their current mentor is not a good fit. "These are very nice, well-inten- tioned people, as is always the case when people volunteer to help," Finn said. "We screen them, we train them, we provide them profes- sional support and provide them with ongoing educational support." At its core, ABCD offers women new to breast cancer the voice and wisdom of someone who under- stands — someone who once felt the same way they do, and faced the same questions and fears. "We're sisters, and that's very, very true," Hathaway said. "You can empathize with us, but you don't really know what we're going through." The ABCD Breast Cancer Helpline, which offers immediate support from a survivor and mentor match, is 800-977-4121. The offices can be reached at 414-977-1780. Group offers peer support for women battling breast cancer Tattoos From Page 1A cancer scars are often large, and take several hours to complete. "They're in the chair for five to 10 hours at a time," Rachelle said. "That's very hard to do. It's very hard to sit for that long. All of these women are super strong." Waukesha's Jedi Tattoo is the Milwaukee-area host of this year's P.Ink event. The event started in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2013, and will be in 14 cities across North America this year. Rachelle and Steven participat- ed in the event last year, and Rachelle is involved again this year. Local artists will tattoo breast cancer survivors for free during the day-long event Oct. 28 at Jedi Tattoo. It is a day of liberation and redemption for survivors, and a day for artists to impact the world yet again. "It's very, very emotional," Rachelle said. "You have this warm feeling going you through, and it's happiness. There's so much love going through one room it's kind of scary." Families struggling to make ends meet Study: Not uncommon in county By Lauren Anderson Freeman Staff WAUKESHA — Waukesha County consistently ranks among the state's most affluent counties, but those rankings rarely take into account some- one like ALICE. She works a full-time job, sticking to a lean budget, but is still living paycheck to pay- check. According to a new report, people like ALICE are common. ALICE isn't a real person, but rather an acronym — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — used to represent individuals and families who are working, but are unable to afford basic necessities like housing, food, child care, health care, and transporta- tion. The study, recently released by United Way of Greater Mil- waukee and Waukesha County, is the first of its kind. It quan- tifies the size of the workforce that is struggling financially and the reasons why. "United Ways all across Wis- consin decided it was time to get together and study this problem," said Krystina Kohler, income portfolio coor- dinator with United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Wauke- sha County. "It represents the individuals that are really hardworking, taxpaying, that live above the federal poverty line, but below the basic cost of living. We find that they are often an ignored or overlooked part of our population." According to the report, while just 6 percent of Wauke- sha County households live in poverty, 23 percent fall under the ALICE threshold. It means 29 percent of county house- holds — or 44,941 households — experience financial insecuri- ty. Statewide, 13 percent of households fall under the fed- eral poverty line, while 29 per- cent fall into the ALICE catego- ry. Among those households, 89 percent of those residents are white and 44 percent are head- ed by someone aged 65 or older. 'There are a lot of folks struggling' The study yielded surprising results across the state, UWGMWC Vice President of Community Impact Nicole Angresano said, but particular- ly in counties like Waukesha, where it's assumed residents are relatively well off. "I think the perception of poverty is that it is a central Milwaukee problem and that it looks a certain way or feels a certain way," Angresano said. "But what we know is that there are a lot of folks strug- gling. I was startled by some of the communities that came up as having a significant ALICE number compared to the public perception of those communi- ties." In Waukesha County, some individual communities had particularly high numbers of financially-unstable house- holds, including 41 percent in Waukesha, 52 percent in Butler, 40 percent in Pewaukee, 40 per- cent in Lannon and 36 percent in Hartland. "That's a lot of people living in this healthy, robust county that aren't doing as well as their neighbors," Angresano said. "And I think we need to be cognizant of that." People in these circum- stances, Angresano said, aren't able to store any money in sav- ings after paying the bills each month and are left without a safety net for unexpected expenses. Such people could even include a family living in a large Brookfield home, but unsure if they're going to be able to keep it, she said. No easy solutions One of the first goals of the study is to raise awareness of financial insecurity in individ- ual communities and lear n how to have conversations about it. Angresano said it's impor- tant to remove the stigma asso- ciated with financial insecuri- ty. "These are our neighbors and our kids' classmates and fami- lies that we're talking about," Angresano said. "It's not 'us and them,' as it's often por- trayed. It's just us." Meanwhile, Kohler said, it's important for organizations like United Way to have data that will inform their services moving forward. "It's not a silver bullet solu- tion," Kohler said. "There's nothing we can do in the short term that's really going to fix the problem. It's something that the entire community needs to get together and work together to fix. That includes leaders in the community, non- profits like us, politicians, everybody." Email: landerson@conleynet.com Waukesha County's top 10 communities with most finan- cially insecure households Tight spots Source: United Way of Greater Mil- waukee and Waukesha County 52% 41% 40% 40% 36% 36% 35% 34% 34% 31% 31 % Submitted photo Rachelle Krischan applies a tattoo to Angela Covert of Waukesha, as part of Covert's recovery from breast cancer surgery. Area National Merit semifinalists named WAUKESHA — The National Merit Scholarship Program announced this week the names of about 16,000 semifinalists who have crossed the first threshold in the competition. Among them are 56 students from Waukesha County schools. The following schools have qual- ifying students: Brookfield Academy: Noah Ahmed, Sriram Gollapudy, Shalini Gundamraj, Emma Lenz, Clare McCoy, Skye McCoy, Jason Tan, Megan Vipond, Alexander Zhu Brookfield Central High: Olga Boukhvalova, Eugene Kim, Brian Li, Aiyu Liang, Teja Pattabhira- man, Victoria Pipia Brookfield East: Suchir Bhatt, Steven DeGarmo, Sean Glatch, Colin Gray-Hoehn, Aditya Jhaveri, Elaine Klatt, Michelle Liu, Alyssa Meurer, Timothy Vrakas The semifinalists have the opportunity to continue in the competition for about 7,500 National Merit scholarships worth about $33 million that will be offered next spring. About 90 percent of semifinalists are expected to advance to the finalist level of the competition and half of the finalists will win a scholar- ship. ActionCOACH recognized with awards ELM GROVE — Action- COACH received various awards at the company's annu- al global conference recently. The Elm Grove branch of the company, which specializes in business coaching, created 377 new jobs and $458 million in new revenue to southeastern Wisconsin. For its achieve- ment, the Elm Grove business was named the Global Firm of the Year and also received the Most Community Impact award at the meeting in South Africa. The fir m also received the award for Global 24x7 Assess- ments, which is the second year in a row the branch has been honored for it. ActionCOACH of Elm Grove applied the most client assessments of any other branch in the world. IN BRIEF 1. Butler 2. Waukesha 3. Lannon 4. Pewaukee 5. Hartland 6. Mukwonago 7. T. Brookfield 8. Oconomowoc 9. Dousman 10. (tie) M. Falls Delafield

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