POINT PLEASANT BEACH — The annual Run for the Call 5K went off at midnight on New Year’s Day, when runners, with shirts bearing the names of deceased police officers, took to the boardwalk.
All proceeds from the Run for the Call benefit CopLine, a 24/7 international mental health hotline for police officers, which is staffed by trained and vetted retired law enforcement Stephanie Samuels. Samuels, a psychotherapist and founder of CopLine, explained how the Run for the Call has become an annual event in Point Beach.
“Years ago, terrorist threats were a little bit higher and one of my daughters was a runner. For several years, I had run the New York Road Runners Midnight Run in Central Park and just thought it was great,” she said. “My daughter wanted to do that, and I said, ‘Oh, hell no. You’re not going into Manhattan.’”
“So, we made a decision — there were six of us — that we were going to do a run on the Point Pleasant boardwalk,” Samuels said. “So, we did that for a couple years and then I said, ‘Why the hell are we not doing this as a fundraiser?’”
Samuels mentioned that shirts, made by local business owner Brian Kearney of Beach Graffiti, are given to registered runners, each bearing the name of a police officer or K9 who died from causes varying from suicide to illness.
“(Run for the Call) is our most successful financial fundraiser every year,” she said. “Because we take no state or federal money, our private fundraisers (and donations) are all we survive on.”
“And I have to tell you — at midnight on New Year’s Eve, there is nothing open any longer, so having that boardwalk and that sense of peace is just an amazing feeling,” she said.
According to an update posted to CopLine’s Facebook page Thursday morning, this year’s Run for the Call raised more than $40,000 for CopLine.
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