Every time Laura Lucas pops a batch of homemade snickerdoodles into her oven, she says it smells like her mother, Sharon.
To be clear, it’s not that her mom ever really smelled like a combination of cream of tartar and flour, it’s just that growing up, Laura spent a lot of time with Sharon in their Cupertino kitchen baking those cookies.
“The act of rolling the cookies out and putting them on the baking sheet. She’s there with me,” Laura says.
Feeling close, emotionally, to her mother is something Laura cherishes these days, because being close to her, physically, is a difficult experience. Sharon, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago, no longer recognizes Laura. “It’s like I’ve lost her, but in a really weird way,” Laura says.
In looking for ways to deal with her grief, and honor her mother, Laura thought of those snickerdoodle cookies. She also came up with a way to use them to help others struggling with Alzheimer’s.
A few years ago Laura and her sister began participating in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s. While her initial fundraising efforts were successful, Laura wasn’t comfortable simply asking people for money. It was much easier if she offered to give them something in return.”
“So I thought about these cookies and I thought about the fact that I had by this point–I was famous for these cookies.”
So with some encouragement from her friends, she came up with the idea to sell the famous snickerdoodle cookies for the cause. $25 would get a donor three dozen, attractively wrapped, cookies.
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In her three years of selling the snickerdoodles as part of her Cookies For A Cause, Laura has baked more than 15,000 cookies, and raised more than $15,000.
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For Laura, baking the cookies and selling them to friends and family is more than just raising money for Alzheimer’s research. It’s about feeling her mom’s presence.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to hop in my kitchen and do something that she taught me how to do and I feel like that’s spending time with her.”
Each box of cookies is special, because it has touches of creativity that Sharon would appreciate. Laura described her as very creative, especially when it came to family Christmas cards.
“I’ve tried to put little touches of her into the presentation and, you know, tried to make them cute ‘cause she would like them cute,” Laura says.
