Diving For Dollars

The crowd of 300 was so silent you could hear a pin drop, as 10-year-old Annie McMahon stood before them at the Belle Harbor Yacht Club.
She gave an eloquent speech of thanks to all the friends and strangers who have supported her in her struggle with a rare and chronic disease that threatens to cut her life short.
“Not a lot of you know me so I am going to talk about how it is to have Cystic Fibrosis,” she began on Saturday, February 10.
Cystic Fibrosis is a little-known disease that affects an estimated 30,000 people in the United States, according to the Maryland-based Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Caused by a faulty gene, the disease produces thick, sticky mucus that can clog the lungs and lead to life-threatening infections. It can also wreak havoc on the digestive system by preventing the body from breaking down and absorbing food.
“I am a very normal kid. I have really great friends that are always there for me. I go to cheerleading, basketball and gymnastics. In between all this, I have to take a lot of medicine. It takes me a long time every day to do my treatments and sometimes, all of that is not enough and I have to go to the hospital for IV antibiotics.”
By the time she finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, said her mother, Theresa McMahon, who couldn’t quite put her finger on why, for the seventh year in a row, people who have no connection to her family or the disease have gathered together on the Queens waterfront to take the chilly mid-winter “Plunge for Cystic Fibrosis.”
All she knows is that this year the group, of which many are Rockaways locals, came out in bigger and braver form than ever.
According to Claire Conti, McMahon’s sister who helps organize the event, the first year the event raised $18,000 dollars.
This year the event brought in over $100,000 from 150 people who were willing to suspend reason and make believe they were polar bears by jumping into the icy ocean water at 2 p.m. Another 150 landlubbers cheered them on and joined in at the after party held in the yacht club.
“We don’t even know the final amount until like a month afterwards,” Conti said, explaining that checks continue to trickle in even after the event.
Annie was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was just 17-months-old.
“She was crying constantly,” said her mother, who described her shock at learning her daughter’s diagnosis. Both parents must carry the defective gene that causes the disease, McMahon explained, but she had no inclination that either she or her husband, John, did.
Today, Annie tries to lead a normal 10-year-old’s life filled with school, sports and friends. Unlike some kids who want to be professional athletes, however, Annie participates in sports more to help keep her lungs healthy, her mother said.
Despite an outward appearance of health, however, Annie struggles with illness.
“This year has been a tough year. I have had a lot of trouble with my lungs and breathing that I have never had before,” she told the crowd.
“I am in a medical study that is helping me. It is because of all of your donations that there are so many promises for the future.”
“She’ll probably need a permanent feeding tube,” McMahon said, describing how Annie spends two hours of every day doing some sort of treatment for her disease, whether it is taking pills with every meal or wearing a vibrating vest to loosen the mucus in her chest.
McMahon estimated that her daughter goes on intravenous antibiotics to fight severe infections anywhere from 14 to 21 days at a time about once every six months. Annie typically spends the first three to five of those days in the hospital after which she is able to go home because her mother has been taught to give her the treatments.
Each year the money raised by the event is donated to the Greater New York Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in White Plains of which 90 cents out of each dollar raised goes to fund research into the disease, McMahon said.
According to Teresa Gaudio, the senior director of special events for that chapter, the plunge is one of the largest family-run fundraisers for the foundation nationally and has launched spin-off events in other areas.
“It’s a wonderful event,” she said. After the plunge, revelers take over the club to eat, drink, take part in raffles and dance to the Irish music of the Cunningham Brothers Band and DJ-spun tunes.
The turnout, which grows beyond McMahon’s expectations each year along with the corresponding donations, touches her deeply.
“They’re just amazing people,” she said of the supporters. “We’re so lucky.”