South Charlotte Weekly

Page 1

Celebrating Championship Week

Concert tour strikes a cord at South Meck

Starts on page 21

page 14

Serving The Arboretum, Ballantyne, Blakeney and SouthPark communities

Locally Owned & Operated www.thecharlotteweekly.com

Volume 13, Number 44 • Oct. 31 to Nov. 6, 2014

Spooky celebration helps fight skin cancer Halloween-themed event benefits melanoma nonprofit

by Josh Whitener josh@thecharlotteweekly.com

a seventh-grader at SCMS, spent nearly two years contacting the Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to advocate for road projects that would ensure the safety of children in her neighborhood. After hitting a wall of red tape from government agencies and not hearing anything back from the school system, Slade became discouraged and is now skeptical any such project will come. She and her neighbors rotate

David and Donna Hodgkins’s lives changed forever when their daughter, Jessica, was diagnosed with melanoma in September 2007. Jessica lost her battle with the disease at 30 years old in April 2008 – just seven months after being diagnosed – but her parents are continuing her legacy through the Charlotte-based Purple Promise Foundation to End Melanoma. The nonprofit, founded in memory of Jessica, aims to spread skin cancer awareness and education, as well as fund research for a cure for skin cancer. “Everything we do, we know we’re doing for (Jessica) and in her memory,” David Hodgkins said. “You know in your heart that you’re possibly saving lives, so that’s something that’s really good for us.” The Purple Promise Foundation teamed up with Dermatology, Laser & Vein Specialists of the Carolinas on Thursday, Oct. 30, for BooTox, an annual Halloween-themed event that benefits the foundation. Each year during BooTox, the south Charlotte office offers reduced prices on cosmetic services, such as Botox and Xeomin treatments, laser hair removal and more, with the goal of raising funds and awareness for the foundation. “It started about seven years ago just as a way to provide additional service to patients, and kind of took a life of its own. We kind of go overboard with decorations and costumes,” Dr. Gilly Munavalli, with Dermatology, Laser & Vein Specialists, said. “We established more and more of a patient base on that day, and … because in dermatology we see a lot of melanoma and skin cancer every year, we said, ‘Let’s try to give back to (a skin cancer) organization.’” The office offered free skin cancer screenings in

(see Crossroad on page 17)

(see BooTox on page 5)

students At a crossroad

South Charlotte Middle School students and parents cross Pineville-Matthews Road around 4 p.m. as they do every school day. Ryan Pitkin/SCW photo by Ryan Pitkin ryan@unioncountyweekly.com

Five middle-school-aged children and three adults peer down PinevilleMatthews Road as westbound traffic barrels by at 50 miles per hour. It’s nearing 4 p.m. and traffic levels are starting to increase. When given a wide enough gap, the entire group walks to the median, which consists of about four feet of concrete. They wait together a few minutes longer before crossing the two lanes of eastbound traffic. This

game of “Frogger,” as one parent calls it, is a daily thing for these families. The kids are students at South Charlotte Middle School (SCMS), which is tucked behind a daycare at the intersection of Strawberry Lane and Pineville-Matthews Road. The subdivisions they live in are just a three-minute walk from the school, save for the minutes spent waiting for traffic to zoom by before giving them a chance to cross the dangerous road. Susan Slade, a resident of the Alexsis subdivision and mother of

INDEX: News Briefs, 6; Crime Blotter, 7; Scores, 8; Education, 11; Rev. Tony, 19; Calendar, 20; Sports, 21; Classifieds, 27


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