Story and Picture by Michael Roy
Days like Sunday, November 30, are a good reminder of how a community can rally around one of its own.
A benefit was held at Trinity Lutheran School from 3-8 p.m. to raise funds to help Brittany Moniz, a Janesville resident who is battling cancer. Moniz is a neighbor of the Stockman family, who were honored to help and provide the school gym for the benefit. Connie Volk, a fellow Janesvillian, helped Britt’s family organize the event at Trinity. It was dubbed “Britt’s Battle to Thrive Benefit.”
In December 2024, Britt discovered a lump that she initially thought was a milk duct. After numerous tests, it turned out that she had the most aggressive form of breast cancer, stage 3C inflammatory triple negative breast cancer, that spread to her lymph nodes and, potentially, her spine. After a dozen rounds of chemo and a PET scan, followed by four more rounds of chemo, she was handling treatment well. After a mastectomy and lymph node dissection, Moniz had no living cancer cells in the breast tissue or lymph nodes that were removed from her body.
When she began radiation treatment, she started experiencing headaches. When treatment was supposed to wrap up on September 29, it was discovered through a brain MRI on September 18 that she had numerous brain tumors. She had stage four cancer. She has gone through ten whole brain radiation treatments since. That alone is undoubtedly expensive. But Britt’s family has also made weekly (sometimes daily) trips to Rochester for treatments.
The call to help couldn’t have been stronger. So, a team of friends and family, including Volk, Brianne Warner, Michael Bay, and Alicia Hazel, among others, banded together to help Britt and her family with their finances by hosting a benefit. According to Volk, Trinity is one of two places holding a benefit for Britt. There will be another benefit happening in Britt’s hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin.
The committee pulled all the stops for the event. There was a silent auction, a bake sale, a gun raffle, and a meal served. The meal was a hot beef sandwich with cheesy potatoes or mac and cheese. The silent auction alone spanned most of the outer part of the gym’s basketball court, with items ranging from stuffed animals to metal signs with the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings logos on them. The bake sale featured cookies, fudge bars, and Belgian stroopwafels. There was also musical entertainment all afternoon.
Volk was in awe of how many people attended the event within the first hour and how many items they donated. “The community has come together so immensely,” she said. “We have…I don’t even know how many donation baskets. We’re still bringing them in today from near and far. The outpouring…everybody poured their heart out into this.”
Eugenia Stockman, who was helping serve the meal, was happy to help. “We’re honored that we were asked to host this,” she said. “We are always willing to help those in need at Trinity.”
It was a tremendous turnout, and we, as a community, hope we made Britt’s family proud by showing how much we support them.
