Colorado Town Honors Its Cancer-Fighting Student

BASALT, Colo. (CBS4) -- Eighty Basalt High School students, faculty, community members and friends of a young woman fighting cancer gathered at Basalt High School on Wednesday and shed their locks in her honor.

Sadly, Anna Cunningham passed away the very next day.

Cunningham was a junior at the high school. She battled a rare cancer, Ewing sarcoma, for more than three years.

"She was just a ray of sunshine," Paola Martinez, a classmate of Cunningham's, told the Aspen Times.

Participants held signs naming themselves and the cancer sufferers they wanted to recognize.

Scissors and electronic clippers made short work of fundraiser's follicles.

Basalt High School Principal Peter Mueller led chants, yelling "We are!" as students responded with "Longhorns!", the school mascot. Again, Mueller yelled "We are!"

"One!" was the reply.

Cunningham watched via livestream.

"She loves the support but doesn't like the attention," her father, Red, told the Aspen Times. "She doesn't like being the center of attention for being sick."

Initial hopes were to raise $10,000 in the event, called the Basalt Bold & Bald. More than seven times that was raised prior to the event, and the fundraising will continue through the end of the school year in an effort to reach a new goal: $100,000.

The money goes to the St. Baldrick's Foundation for research of childhood cancers and their cures.

The night before the event, the Basalt Town Council voted to declare Wednesday "Anna Cunningham Day."

VIDEO: Basalt Bold & Bald