Senior to leave legacy of charity at Rowan
Stephanie Coutros founded Relay for Life as tribute to late friend

Across Rowan University's campus in Glassboro, senior Stephanie Coutros is known as the "Relay for Life girl."

And for good reason.

Three years ago as a sophomore, Coutros, a public relations major from Freehold, founded and organized Rowan's first Relay for Life, an overnight event to benefit the American Cancer Society.

During Relay for Life, Rowan students obtain at least $100 in sponsorships as they commit to spending 24 straight hours on the university's track. Students work in teams as they take turns in the relay throughout the night.

Over the past two years, Rowan students have raised $107,000 to help fight cancer. Their goal this year is $85,000. That's $20,000 more than they raised last year, when they surpassed their goal by $15,000.

For Coutros, every dollar counts. She personally knows the toll cancer can take on the person with the disease and their loved ones.

As a sophomore at Red Bank Catholic High School, Coutros lost her best friend, Ali Sacerdote, of Freehold, to brain cancer. Sacerdote died in April 2001 after undergoing 21 operations in the year after her diagnosis.

"She was a very sweet girl, very personable. She always had a smile on her face," says Coutros, noting that, also in 2001, Ali's father, Joseph, was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Coutros got involved in Relay for Life that same year as a way to pay tribute to her friend and the Sacerdote family. She organized a Relay for Life event in her Lincroft community and later attended national and regional leadership summits for relay organizers sponsored by the American Cancer Society.

When she enrolled at Rowan, Coutros started from scratch to organize a Rowan Relay for Life.

"For me, getting involved in Relay for Life was a way to cope. Sophomore year of high school is hard enough. And then to lose Ali ... it was that much harder. Getting involved in the relay was the best way to honor Ali and her family Pretty much everyone is affected by cancer. The disease doesn't discriminate according to gender, race, size or whatever," she said.

While Relay for Life is billed as a fun-filled overnight event, and it is, it's so much more, says Coutros. The first lap of the relay - called the Survivors Lap - is always led by cancer survivors, people of all ages who have overcome the disease. Later in the relay, Rowan's stadium lights are dimmed and participants light luminarias, quiet tributes to those who have lost their lives to cancer.

In between, there are fun and games for team members, who take turns doing laps and keeping themselves up all night ... not that college students, accustomed to "pulling all-nighters," usually have a problem with that, Coutros laughs.

This year, Rowan's Relay for Life will be held April 27-28.

"Once you go to Relay for Life, you catch the spirit," she says. "Once you step onto the field, you realize you're doing something good for people.

It's very emotional.

"We have neighbors of the university who will come up to us in the morning and say, 'You kept me up all night. What's going on?' And then when they hear what we're doing, they donate. People are very cool about it, very supportive," she said.

This year, alumni of Sigma Sigma Sigma, Coutros' sorority, were the first team to sign up for the relay.

As Coutros prepares to leave Rowan for what she plans will be a career in the nonprofit sector, she hopes she has left a legacy of service. This year, Relay for Life is being chaired by two Rowan students, Alexis McCrosson and Rosy Henderson.

"My personal goal is to train these girls to the best of my ability," says Coutros, who has two internships this semester with Habitat for Humanity and with Robins' Nest in Glassboro, a nonprofit children's services organization.

"I want to come back 15 years from now as an alum and see that this is still going on," says Coutros, who also worked as a resident assistant and peer leader at Rowan and founded a Colleges Against Cancer chapter at the university.

Coutros, who will join the AmeriCorps national service organization in October in Sacramento, Calif., knows her work with Relay for Life and other campus service initiatives will look terrific as she builds her public relations career. But the loss of her friend, the person whose memory she continues to honor through her work and service, is never far from her thoughts.

"Truthfully," Coutros says, "I'd rather have Ali."