Worcester bakery fuels PMC riders

(NECN: Katie Daly, Worcester, Mass.) – A 192-mile bike ride across Massachusetts can work up quite an appetite. Today, volunteers spent the day baking up more than 8,000 chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter and sugar cookies for the riders of this weekend’s Pan Mass Challenge. The main ingredients: what else but love and care. Wednesday morning dozens of volunteers showed up at Widoff’s Bakery in Worcester to put their cookie baking skills to the test. All to fuel the riders taking part in the nations largest athletic fundraiser, the 30th installment of the pan mass challenge. For the past 25 years Widoff’s has helped baked the cookies donated by bake and joy foods in North Andover. They estimate that by now they have made almost 100 thousand cookies for the PMC. Most of the volunteers come back year after year to help bake and pack up the cookies. This is Danielle Ritacco’s 5th year. She has it down to a science. While the effort may be old hat for Danielle. This year is personal. Her grandmother recently became a patient at Dana-Farber cancer institute. She says volunteering, now gives her a sense of empowerment. “It feels good. Anything that helps with a cure, so nobody else has to go through it.” And a cure may soon be in sight. If bakers keep fueling riders, and riders keep fueling a cure.