Friends,

January was a very busy month filled with accomplishments, including work on my anti-human trafficking efforts. That work culminated in a big event during Super Bowl weekend – raising awareness about this important issue at an event that unfortunately has become plagued by trafficking.

Team-

On Sunday, the Truth Squad at The Seattle Times reprimanded the Washington State Democratic Party for its ham-handed attack on Rob, in which the Democrats take a quote from Rob in a 2004 Times article completely out of context. Perhaps next time the party wants to cite a newspaper, it shouldn’t stretch the truth so far that the same paper calls the attack "false."

On Saturday, Rob joined 683 others to brave Kennewick's Polar Plunge — an annual event at Columbia Park to raise money for the Special Olympics.

This year's plunge shattered event records, with nearly double the participants and fives time as much raised. Up from $25,000 the year before, Saturday's plunge brought in an impressive $125,000 for the Special Olympics.

Rob participated as a member of Kennewick Police Chief Ken Hohenberg's team, which included most of the law enforcement agency chiefs from the Tri-Cities.

As he was getting out of the water, Rob said, "Everybody should come down and do this."

Before the name became synonymous with breakthrough cancer research and Nobel laureates, Fred Hutchinson was a baseball player. Beginning in 1938, "Hutch" pitched for the Seattle Rainiers and then Detroit. He went on to manage both teams, as well as St. Louis and Cincinnati, where he led his team to the 1961 World Series.

Three years later Fred died of lung cancer.

It was the legacy of his brother that fueled Seattle surgeon Dr. William Hutchinson's vision of "building an organization that would provide funds and laboratory space to physicians pursuing research." Today, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center carries on that legacy, with a self-admittedly ambitious goal to eradicate cancer and other life-threatening diseases.