Mayor Joan Hawkins announced the completion of the Second Annual Malad City Walking Challenge. The Walking Challenge is an event sponsored by the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health.  It is designed to encourage an active lifestyle, which in turn reduces the risks for many negative health conditions.  Preventative care is the most effective way of decreasing medical costs in the future, and walking is an easy and accessible means of maintaining health.  The Challenge encourages mayors to walk 10,000 steps a day in order to qualify for a $1,000 donation to the city.  Mayor Hawkins has expanded the challenge to members of the community, and allowed those who wanted to participate to receive their own awards and recognition.  

At the end of the event, a new champion was crowned, and as the mayor stated,  “I am providing a $50 gift certificate to Andrea Bleazard, along with the traveling trophy from Loa Dawn Thorpe, last year's winner. The next four receive a $25 gift certificate.” 

At the end of each week, we had a drawing for four people to receive a $25 gift certificate. Those that won the random drawings were: Tyler Hansen, Hannah Lieberg, Kellie Black, Sharee Blasidell, Hannah Luthi, Riker Jones, Kristi Richardson, Britney Leckie, Jennifer Neilson, Lucinda Nimer, Mike Richardson, Jeanie Jones, Carrie Jensen, Kathryn Fossum, Dawn Lloyd, Ashley Allen.  All gift certificates were for Malad merchants.

In order to bring the challenge into the community, Hawkins explained, “I purchased the prizes from my $1,000 that I received for last year's walking challenge. I plan to do the same thing for next year.” 

For her part, Mayor Hawkins had a good month of it.  As she said, “I finished 30th in the Blue Cross Walking Challenge. If I would have walked on Friday, I would have been 25th, but I was not home and couldn't get my steps in! Anyway, it doesn't matter. I finished with 401,424 steps. Courtney Frost, the Executive Director of Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation contacted me and told me that whatever level I was able to complete, they would match the donation for the Playground Committee. So in addition to receiving $1,000 for finishing the challenge, they are donating another $1,000 to the Playground Committee. I thought that was great!”

A list of top scores includes: Andrea Bleazard (815,342 steps), Lucinda Nimer (807,640), Loa Dawn Thorpe (746,466), Randi Platt (599,122), Becky Blackwell (566,898), Kristi Richardson (538,4730), Britney Leckie (514,805), Joan Hawkins (401,007), Ashley Allen (371,586), and Jennifer Neilson (370,758).