Pizza fundraiser helps mom’s fight against cancer

By Kelly Terpstra, kterpstra@charlescitypress.com

Fighting cancer, one slice at a time.

Cedar River Pizza Co., owned by Joel Biggerstaff and his wife, Gillian, took an extraordinary step this past Monday to help out a Charles City woman who has recently been diagnosed with cancer.

The Biggerstaff’s wanted to do something about it.

Sierra Wyborny has worked for Cedar River Pizza for some time now since it opened in Charles City in January 2016. She has been a faithful employee for Biggerstaff and his crew.

“Sierra has been here since day one. She is like part of our family,” Joel said.

But matters turned to a more serious note for Sierra and her family in the past couple of months. Since June, Sierra’s mother, Misty Koebrick, has been in a battle with a foe that is very hard to face. Koebrick has been traveling to the University of Iowa Hospitals to get treatment for leukemia.

The fact that the household went from two working parents down to one also created added stress and an increase in the financial burden that can be created after a cancer diagnosis and its ensuing treatment.

Biggerstaff made sure he could lend a helping hand.

“We knew we had to do something, we just didn’t know what it was,” he said.

So he planned Pop up Pizza with A Purpose – A Benefit for Misty Koebrick.

Six employees, including the Biggerstaffs and their son Jackson, volunteered their time and got ready to sling some pies at a rapid pace to raise funds for Misty’s fight.

For four hours on Monday – 4 to 8 p.m. – the phones rang off the hook and the staff at Cedar River Pizza tried to keep up.

All proceeds and 100 percent of the money generated from the pizza sales for the four hours on that day would be given to Misty to help out with the extra expenses of her costly treatment like gas money, buying groceries and staying overnight in Iowa City.

“Every donation, every tip, it all went to them,” said Biggerstaff.

By the end of the night, Biggerstaff was blown away by the response from everyone who wanted to take part in the fundraiser by purchasing his pizza.

“I kind of had a number in my head about how busy we were going to be,” said Biggerstaff. “It far surpassed that.”

The volume and sheer number of pies that were picked up equaled roughly to a full week’s worth of business, Joel said. Cedar River Pizza is open five days a week.

“That’s just a testament to our town and our community and the support,” and Biggerstaff.

The calls kept coming in so fast that Biggerstaff said they ran out of dough.

“My fridge only holds so much dough and we had to actually stop taking orders,” he said.

“It’s not like we can just whip up a batch and use it right away,” said Biggerstaff. “We just got to a point to where that was what we could physically handle.”

Joel said that people were very understanding and knew going in that the wait times for their pizzas might be a little longer than usual.

“It was such an amazing turnout. We’re blessed to live in a community that comes out and supports stuff like that,” Joel said. “There’s probably a lot of people that couldn’t get through that wanted to.”

Brady Callison and Rebecca Hoffman were also staff members that donated their time and energy on Monday for the worthy cause to help out anyway they could.

“It just kind of steamrolled into this,” said Biggerstaff. “It turned out amazing. I won’t rule out doing another one in the future.”

Biggerstaff said Misty went back to Iowa City on Wednesday for treatment and another round of chemo.

People can follow Misty’s journey and her fight against cancer at www.caringbridge.org/visit/mistykoebrick.