Wawa Hoppers

This column originally appeared on May 11, 2008

The story that I enjoy the most from the saga of the Wawa Hoppers is the episode in which Ann and Mary speed away from the site of a street shooting in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, only to make a quick stop at the Wa on Aramingo Avenue while the sound of the gunfire is still fresh in their ears.

You may have heard of the Wawa Hoppers, the five young women who hail from West Chester — Jill Fitzpatrick, Emily Koch, Andi Sasin, Mary Speer and Ann Wuetig — and who more than a year ago began a quest to visit and shop at each of the 578 Wawas known to man — Wawas, of course, being the equivalent in convenience store circles as Tiger Woods is to golfers.

What at first blush sounds like some particularly silly attempt to gain entrance into the Guinness Book of World Records is put into serious context when the Hoppers explain that their mission is being performed in honor of a childhood friend, Maria Whitehead, who died in November 2006 of melanoma. They say they are hopeful that Wawa will provide a matching gift to the Melanoma International Foundation for every dollar the pentangle spend at one of its stores.

Whitehead was a classmate of theirs at West Chester East High School and an athletic legend in the area. She was an assistant coach for the Duke University field hockey team when she died and had earlier played and coached on U.S. Olympic field hockey teams. (For matters of full disclosure, I should note that she was also the niece of my friends Jim and Marian Vito, and I met her once at a family celebration.)

It doesn’t matter how much they spend, only that they collect a receipt. Their self-imposed rule states that only the five are part of the mission, although they will accept rides from friends. The Hoppers have as of recently visited 440 of the 578 Wawas, about 75 percent of their goal, and despite the rising cost of gasoline at the pumps seem well on their way to getting the last outlet crossed off the list sometime this year. They’ve still got the northern section above Allentown to go and the easternmost Wawa in Ocean City, Md., to take care of.

But back to the shooting.

It occurred in August and, in the spirit of letting the Hoppers play the game themselves, I’ll turn the story over to Ann:

“A few weeks ago myself and Mary were on Girard Avenue in Philadelphia at a ridiculously late hour attempting to get home. Right in front of the car, six gunshots went off, and those on the street corner flew by our car,” she wrote on the crew’s blog.

“In stressful situations I always choose the ‘flight’ response, which was obviously smart in this situation. I blindly put the car in reverse fearing that if I raised my head, a bullet would go through the window.

"Speeding off, I was oblivious to the red lights I was passing through; yet, the car came to an abrupt stop when a Wawa sign appeared in front of me. We somehow made it over to Aramingo Avenue, and I was not going to pass up the opportunity to cross that Wawa off the list.

"Mary and I ran in and out of there in a matter of one minute. There is dedication, and then there is stupidity. I think the decision to stop that night was the latter of the two.”

I would respectfully disagree.

For more about the Wawa Hoppers, visit www.wawa2010.blogspot.com.