It’s probably an understatement to say that Luca Bertucci had some strong motivation to raise money for cancer research funding.
After in-patient chemotherapy during his sophomore year of school following a cancer diagnosis, Bertucci rang his cancer-free bell last fall and is in remission.
Bertucci had been stricken with Burkitt’s lymphoma — a rare but aggressive cancer of the lymphatic system.
“I had seven months of treatment and a lot of ER visits and hospital stays,” said Bertucci, 17, of Murrysville. “My girlfriend was a teammate with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society last year, and she asked me to join.”
Each year, the society organizes teams of high school students for its Student Visionaries program. Teams like the Franklin Regional-based Panthers Against Cancer organized fundraising events and solicited personal and corporate donations over the campaign’s seven weeks.
With plenty motivation, Bertucci was able to raise the largest amount of any single student in the Pittsburgh/Cleveland region, finishing with $40,200 — more than half of his team’s total.
That also helped him earn the Student Visionaries 2025 Team Member of the Year Award.
“They do incentives like, the first person to raise $250 gets $250, or a prize for the first person to get 100 donations,” Bertucci said. “I pretty much got every incentive in the Pittsburgh area.”
Erica Gribbin of Plum, the society’s campaign development manager for the Student Visionaries program, said it was awesome to watch Bertucci’s transformation.
“He set a $10,000 goal in February that he didn’t think he would reach, and with some coaching and me being his cheerleader, it was an impressive experience to watch him turn into this fundraising machine,” Gribbin said.
In addition to fundraising, one of the Student Visionaries program goals is to foster leadership skills in team members. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Bertucci.
“I used to be really outgoing, but after my treatment I felt really shy,” he said. “The program and the campaign really helped build my communication skills and my confidence back, and so many opportunities have come up through the whole process.”
Gribbin said she wants students to come out of their shells through the campaign.
“It’s something I try to press with the kids,” she said. “A lot of them are stuck in their phones. They text, and they don’t have a ton of face-to-face conversations.
“So getting them to the point where they can ask someone for a large donation is something that helps us and them.”
The team organized hoagie sales, solicited donations and held a bake sale at the local fish fry and hosted a hot sauce competition. They even raised donations with the promise that students could win a chance to duct tape Franklin Regional Assistant High School Principal Heath Curran to the wall — which they did.
Bertucci said he couldn’t be more proud to be raising money for cancer research.
“That was our whole thing,” he said, “There are only 1,500 cases each year of my type of lymphoma. So without research, they wouldn’t have been able to develop such a great treatment plan.”
For more, see LLSstudentvisionaries.org.