Cindy and Matt are fighting breast cancer with a new license plate for New Mexicans

This article is from the Hobbs Sun-Times


Stone Elementary fifth grade teacher Cindy Fleharty holds up the new breast cancer awareness license plate for New Mexico Wednesday morning with her class. Fleharty and her husband Matt had the idea for the license plate after Matt’s mother had breast cancer.

Hobbsans Matt and Cindy Fleharty wanted to do something to raise awarness for breast cancer.Their answer was a speciality license plate for vehicles.Thus, the Hobbs couple inspired Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs, to sponsor a bill during the last legislative session making the new breast cancer awareness license plate available to New Mexican drivers.When registering their vehicles, New Mexicans can now fill out an application at the Motor Vehicle Department to purchase the new breast cancer awareness specialty license plate featuring the words “Screening saves lives,” a toll-free number for the American Cancer Society and a pink ribbon.A year ago her husband approached Kernan about an idea they’d had for a breast cancer license plate, said Cindy Fleharty, a fifth-grade teacher at Stone Elementary.The couple, who moved to Hobbs three years ago, had previously talked about finding out how they could get a breast cancer license plate in honor of her husband’s mother, Sandra Fleharty, who died of breast cancer three years ago.Someone had pointed Kernan out to them while they were having dinner one night, Fleharty said.“Matt said, ‘you need to go talk to her’ but I was a little shy,” Fleharty said. “Matt was the one who approached Kernan about the idea with the license plate and she immediately loved and supported it.”“It’s very important to me to make sure women get screened,” Kernan said about why she wanted to sponsor the bill for the breast cancer license plate.Kernan’s mother, Elizabeth Gottshall, died of breast cancer when she was 13 years old.“A lot of people in this community have been touched by cancer,” Kernan added. “I think everyone knows someone who has been touched by cancer.”During the 2008 New Mexico legislative session in January, Kernan said the Flehartys came to Santa Fe to testify on behalf of the bill.“Everyone was supportive of it,” Fleharty recalled. “It wasn’t a struggle to get it passed.”The new plate is available for purchase at the Motor Vehicle Department, Kernan said. It costs $35 in addition to the regular registration fee, and $25 of that fee goes to the New Mexico Department of Health for its Breast Cervical Cancer Detection program that provides mammogram screenings and diagnosis for low-income and underinsured women ages 30-64.“Why do we like the license plate? It honors his mom and it benefits others,” Fleharty said, admiring the specialty plate in her classroom Wednesday morning.“As people see these plates, it’ll remind them to get their screenings (mammograms),” said Kernan. “It’ll also provide funding for low-income women to receive screenings.”The idea for the new specialty license plate evolved as a result of other states’ breast cancer awareness licenses they’d seen, Fleharty said.“I’m obviously not a doctor or a nurse, but we wanted to do something and we thought this was something we could do about it,” Fleharty said.Fleharty said she hopes she and her husband will be among the first New Mexicans to showcase the new breast cancer awareness plate on their vehicles.“I’m excited,” Fleharty said, “I hope that’ll impact other lives.