Independent person

FILE PHOTO Angela Paterson Nantucket has a number of caring youth who give up their personal hours to dedicate themselves to worthy causes. Sometimes their decisions to become enmeshed with fundraising and other ways to promote research benefiting critical medical conditions are inspired by a person in their own lives.

Such was the case with Angela Paterson, whose mother, Kelly, was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 2005. Since then, the disease has spread to other parts of her body and to her brain. Paterson deeply loves her mother and could not stand by watching what she was enduring without doing whatever she could think of to help her and the scores of other women affl icted with this often frightening and sometimes life-threatening cancer.

Paterson, an active and accomplished athlete who ranks as the top scoring female basketball player in Nantucket High School's history, took time from her busy young life this year to help spread the word on breast cancer awareness.

Using her magnetic personality and energized by her devotion to her mom, Paterson rallied support from the Nantucket Boosters Club to give its proceeds from ticket sales, concession stand revenue and raffle ticket sales to the Marla Ceely Lamb Cancer Travel Fund, established 17 years ago to financially assist islanders who need to go to mainland cancer treatments or doctors appointments.

As she says about her drive to exceed in sports, Paterson also says that in all of life's goals, people dedicated to a cause or a personal mission should never give up. I