Tampa Bay Lightning honors local trans student as community hero
The Tampa Bay Lightning honored transgender student Mary Jane Taylor as the 11th Lightning Community Hero of the 2016-17 season at the Amalie Arena during a game against the Washington Capitals Dec. 3.
Taylor serves as the founder and president of the Trans Support Group at Jefferson High School and was recently invited to speak to Hillsborough County School’s principals and assistant principals on safety and awareness for the transgender population.
“Within the last two years, there has been a dramatic increase in transgender deaths across the United States. Along with the increase in deaths, transgender people are ranked in the top-five for most likely to be unemployed, homeless, and at risk for sexually transmitted disease. Only three percent of transgender students across America attend a university or accredited school. Taylor strives to be the change she wants to see,” the Tampa Bay Lightning released in a statement.
Taylor, who received a $50,000 donation from the Lightning Foundation and the Lightning Community Heroes program, will donate $25,000 to Community Tampa Bay and receive a scholarship grant of $25,000 to assist in her educational pursuits.
Taylor is the 240th Lightning Community Hero since the program was introduced in the 2011-12 Lightning season. Since its inception, the program has granted $12.15 million to more than 300 non-profits in the greater Tampa Bay area.
Tampa Bay AIDS Walk was EPIC
Friends, families, co-workers and many members of the Tampa Bay community turned out as more than a thousand people walked in the annual Tampa Bay AIDS Walk at Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg Dec. 10. The crowd was greeted with complimentary coffee for the chilly St. Pete morning (well, chilly for us Floridians) before helping walk the newly formed Empath Partners in Care, or EPIC (the merging of AIDS Service Association of Pinellas and Francis House in Tampa) to more than $100,000.
Newly named EPIC executive director Joy Winheim spoke to the crowd before Hot 101.5’s Miguel Fuller sent the walkers on their stroll around Vinoy Park. (Fuller let the over achieving runners for the 5K portion of the event go a few moments head of the walkers). The crowd was also joined by a slew of celebrities such as Miss ASAP herself Stephanie Stuart, Fizbo the Clown and jolly old Saint Nick in shorts along with a K9 reindeer companion.
Awards were given out to the top walkers and teams who raised the most amount of money. After completing the walk (or run if you were one of the show offs) the party carried over to Punky’s for a celebratory brunch.
Congrats to all of the walkers, runners and volunteers for making this a very successful event.
