Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter founder Denise Lucas is more frenzied than ever hawking tickets to the group’s latest fundraising event, the “Voyage Through the Decades Dance Party” Nov. 29 at the Suffolk Theater.
The effervescent animal-lover, known for her high-energy, nothing-can-stop-me efforts to build a new shelter to replace the town’s decrepit and overcrowded facility on Youngs Avenue, has new inspiration: She’s been diagnosed with an as-yet undetermined type of cancerous tumor in her abdomen and may be undergoing surgery at Sloan Kettering in Manhattan next week.
Specialists at Sloan still have not determined for sure whether the tumor is operable, Lucas said in an interview this morning. Surgeons elsewhere have told her it isn’t. She’s having a final PET scan at Sloan on Tuesday and is hoping doctors will green-light surgery as soon as Thursday.
This will be the fourth surgery she’s had to have since starting RMTAS in October 2011. She’s had three benign tumors removed since then.
“I call it the curse of the shelter,” Lucas said this morning, with a laugh.
The three recent benign tumors made it difficult for her to believe this one was actually malignant. She got the cancer diagnosis from three different doctors after three biopsies before she’d accept it.
Now that she has, she’s got one thing on her mind and it’s not her own health.
“I just want to be able to close the book on this event so I can worry about me and not about the event,” Lucas said today.
Everything — the entertainment, party favors, ticket printing — is already all set up. Now Lucas just needs to sell tickets and at $20 a pop, that shouldn’t be hard. RMTAS events, always affordably priced, usually pack the house, wherever they’re held.
But people are notoriously last-minute about buying event tickets, Lucas says, and there’s usually a flurry of sales at the box office. The only thing is, the “Voyage” dance party tickets won’t be sold at the Suffolk Theater box office on the day of the event.
Tickets can be purchased online through the donation form at the RMTAS site. They will be mailed to purchasers, she said.
Tickets can also be purchased at: Barth’s Drug Store, 32 E. Main St., Riverhead; Riverhead Beverage, 998 Osborn Avenue, Riverhead; and Wendy’s Deli, 55 Middle Road (corner of Sound Avenue), Mattituck.
RMTAS board members Lindsay Reeve and Fred McLaughlin will run the event going forward, Lucas said, “But I just want to put my mind at ease.”
“I’m going to finish this shelter and I’m going to live long enough to do it,” said Lucas, who will turn 47 on Christmas Day.
Anyone who doubts that has never encountered the hard-driving activist, who, in the process of raising money for a new animal shelter, raised additional cash to equip two dog parks for the town — just as a sideline.
Prompted by Lucas’ fundraising efforts, Riverhead Town has agreed to move the shelter to the Henry Pfeifer Community Center in Calverton, an idea first proposed by Lucas in 2013. Earlier this year, the town board agreed to lease the site to the North Fork Animal Welfare League, which has been running the town shelter for the past two years. NFAWL also plans to build a cat shelter at the site.
Top photo caption: Denise Lucas and her dog Duke at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Jamesport this year. (Photo: Peter Blasl)
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