Family’s goal to raise awareness starts with a penny drive
On May 21, 2011, Shelby passed away at her home in High River, Alta., from Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy, or SUDEP. She was 19 years old.
SUDEP patients are often reasonably healthy before they die suddenly and without warning. There is no apparent cause of death in those individuals who pass away from it.
On the anniversary of her death, Shelby’s family decided to distribute jars for a penny drive in their town.
Since May, the Kemery’s penny drive has raised over $4,000, all of which has been donated to the Epilepsy Association of Calgary.
Mandy Kemery, Shelby’s mother, said she was drawn to the association because it provides opportunities for others to be educated about epilepsy.
“Our whole goal has been to educate as many people as we can so it snowballs,” she said. “The more we talk about it, the more questions people ask. The more questions people ask, the more information you get out there. This is not going to stop for us.”
dsemrau@cjournal.ca
Republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
We would love for you to republish our student work!
Just scroll down to copy and paste the code of our article into your CMS. The codes for images, graphics and other embeddable elements may not transfer exactly as they appear on our site. It's free! We only ask that you follow some simple guidelines when doing so:-
You've gotta credit us. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Calgary Journal.” At the top of the story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by the Calgary Journal.”
-
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of the original story on calgaryjournal.ca.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Abbotsford, B.C.” to “Abbotsford” or “here.”)
-
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact managing damclean@mtroyal.ca for more information.
-
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent way to contact you.
-
If you share the story on social media, we’d appreciate a shout-out @CalgaryJournal (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram)
- If we send a request to change or remove Calgary Journal content on your site, you must agree to do so immediately.
This policy was adapted from ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch.
If you have any other questions, contact our managing editor Archie McLean at damclean@mtroyal.ca