Man beats cancer, rides across country to beat it some more
Ronda Sluder, 20 December 2001
It’s been nine years since Patrick Byrne has been to South Lake Tahoe.
Unlike a typical gambling or camping trip, on this visit Byrne is just passing through. His schedule is tight. He needs to travel 4,000 miles on his bike to meet the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge and raise money for a cause all too familiar to him.
As a three-time survivor of seminoma, a type of cancer that had infiltrated his whole body, Byrne, 37, was approached by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to help raise awareness, and to help benefit the Jimmy Fund, which supports cancer research at the institute.
Last year PMC raised $8.5 million. This year the goal was to raise $9 million, but Byrne – a dot-com millionaire – challenged the institute to set the stakes at $11 million, pledging an additional $1 million of his own money if the initial goal is met.
Byrne is the CEO of Overstock.com, a Salt Lake City based company that sells excess inventory of consumer items at large discounts.
