Nearly 11,000 ducks secured funds for the CHRISTUS St. Michael Foundation Saturday as they rode swift currents in the Holiday Springs Water Park's Lazy River.
The plastic yellow waterfowl sported sunglasses in the bright, late-morning, summer sunlight during the 28th annual Great Texarkana Duck Race. Upon their release, the yellow crowd wasted no time getting to the finish line.
The event collected about $50,000 in donations, said Cristy Lummus, the foundation's development coordinator.
Weeks before the race and right up to Saturday morning's duck launch, donors adopted numbered ducks for $5 each or $25 for six. Owners of the first six ducks to reach the finish line took home the prizes.
Doni Phillips won first prize, a 2017 Kia Forte, while second prize, a $1,000 Holiday Cleaners gift certificate, went to Garrett Donohoe. Haley Cook took home third prize, a $500 Super 1 Foods gift card.
C. Scott Otwell, June Lane Porter and Sandra Marshall took fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively.
Lummas said net proceeds collected by the race since its Nov. 6, 1990, inception total about $1.6 million.
This year, the proceeds will be used to help pay for a state-of-the-art linear accelerator for advanced cancer treatment at CHRISTUS St. Michael's W. Temple Webber Cancer Center.
Dr. Omar Ishaq, a radiation oncologist with the center, said the newest up-to-date linear accelerator is far more precise and safe in radiation cancer treatment.
"We can now target cancer treatment with a great deal more precision," Ushaq said. "Not only is cancer-targeting a lot more precise, we can now deliver much higher and more concentrated doses of radiation in the targeted cancer areas. Treating cancer will now be a lot quicker and easier."
Ishaq added that with the upgrade, cancers as prostate cancer, can now be treated in as little as five days rather then taking as long as nine weeks.
"Linear accelerators for radiation treatment have been around for about the last 25 years, but this latest improvement is basically the 'Corvette' of linear accelerators," he said.