Go bananas to save a gorilla

Posted June 7th, 2007 at 12:46 pm by Rusty Deatherage, Sales Operations

 7 Comments / Filed in: Those Crazy Yahoos

This Sunday, June 10, San Francisco will host the fifth annual Great Gorilla Run. Hundreds of people, including myself and five other Yahoos, will be running in full gorilla suits through Golden Gate Park.

I first got interested in this race because I heard if you donate a small fee to save the last 700 remaining mountain gorillas of Central Africa, you get a free gorilla suit. But really, it’s a great cause, and I’m glad we’ll be there supporting it. In fact, we were so excited that last week when we received our gorilla suits, we immediately put them on and paraded around the Yahoo! campus.

When I started working at Yahoo! almost a year ago, I didn’t expect to find so many people so passionate about so many causes – and we don’t just give money. Many Yahoos donate their time to causes they care about. That’s how I first got involved in racing. A co-worker suggested I join the team called “Yahoo!’s Your Daddy” for a relay competition last month where we ran 199 miles from Calistoga to Santa Cruz to benefit children in need of organ transplants.

If you make it to the race Sunday, keep an eye out for a gorilla wearing a purple Yahoo! cape – that’ll be me. And if you’d like to don your own hairy suit and beat your chest, act fast. There’s still time to join us (registration ends tonight!), or you can donate online to the cause. But whatever you do, don’t call us crazy – we prefer the term bananas.

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7 Comments Add your own

Luke Knowland | June 7th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

This is great - I’ve been working with the organizers of this event since last fall (and did the initial design of the site for them), and it’s shaping up to be pretty awesome (they’re up to over 400 runners now). And it so it was neat to, in my first week here at Yahoo!, be checking out Backyard and to see this as the top news link. Yet another reason I am very psyched to be working here.

See you all in the park on Sunday!

jo williams | June 8th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

very good article. well written. good luck with the run.

TheAnand | June 8th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

How do you guys get so much time having fun? I mean I thought all those products you roll out needed some good time! But it seems you guys having a heck of time all the time! God, I want to work in Yahoo! :-) Have fun

Tim | June 9th, 2007 at 2:51 am

OK, that’s great…

But how does this help me do my job? How does this help me work with Yahoo?

Please, work on your product some more and less monkeying around.

One of the monkeys | June 9th, 2007 at 9:55 pm

Tim, please forgive us for spending our personal time (on a Sunday!) to raise money for a worthy cause. We’ll be back in the office bright and early on Monday morning to help you do your job.

Liz Bridges | June 11th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

I think this is great and it really make me happy that you are doing this!!! Jess,is gonna be soo stoked,she loves animals!!! Im soo proud of u!!!! Dont go to bananas though,id like to see u agian.

Pritam Pebam | June 18th, 2007 at 6:42 am

running for a cause.. well really nice