San Jose - When the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) local chapter asked families, friends, and civic and corporate leaders of San Jose to support its annual Light the Night event, the city known as the capital of Silicon Valley came through, raising over one million dollars toward a cure for deadly blood cancers.

The San Jose walk was one of several held throughout the bay area during the month of October, including two in San Francisco (downtown and South San Francisco) and individual events in Walnut Creek, Santa Rosa, and Menlo Park.

"This is an important fundraising event for us," said Christina Jasper, a member of the San Jose LLS office. "As always, we had wonderful participation from our family teams and from our corporate sponsors."

Does high tech translate to high levels of philanthropy? Jasper believes it does. "Silicon Valley companies are incredibly generous," she said. "Seagate led the corporate challenge again this year, as it has in the past, and brought out a huge team-over 300 people. We had a fundraising competition among the major accounting firms in San Jose, which I think E&Y started. E&Y raised about $20,000, and then PricewaterhouseCoopers came through in a big way-they raised over $45,000. And there were many, many other contributors. Some of the companies had large teams here for the walk, too, which was great."

The cause is an important one. According to published statistics, over 71,000 new cases of lymphoma will occur in the United States in 2007, with leukemia producing an additional 44,000 new cases. Leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma are cancers that originate in bone marrow or lymphatic tissues of the body and are considered related. While survival rates are improving due to new drugs and treatment approaches, leukemia remains the leading cause of cancer death in children and young people under the age of 20.