ORANGE PARK – It’s possible to zap it with chemo or slice it out with a scalpel, but two best friends know the best way to fight breast cancer is to walk.

Lisa Felegy of Orange Park and Melissa Cooper of Jacksonville spent the last weekend in April walking around Washington D.C. – not to see the sights – but to fulfill a yearlong goal of theirs to participate in the 14th Annual Avon 39 Walk to End Breast Cancer.

The Avon 39 Walk is split into two days, and aptly refers to the 39 miles each walker must complete to be called a ‘39er.’ Cooper and Felegy now proudly wear that title, and since June have raised more than $7,000 for women who need help paying for cancer treatment, and those suffering from breast cancer using the Avon 39 Walk to End Breast Cancer as a platform.

“Our motto is all they can say is no,” Cooper, one of the halves of their online personas ‘The Wonderbra Twins’ said. “When we’d settle in for the night we’d go online and just search. I went to St. Augustine and just asked every attraction ‘would you donate?’”

So the two got creative with who they asked. Cooper recalled when she asked American Girl Dolls for a donation and received a no, then came home one day to find a full sized doll on her front door step.

“We sold that for $200,” Cooper said. “We just tried to get as creative as we could.”

Overall, the walk in D.C. raised $4.8 million to accelerate breast cancer research with the help of more than 1,900 walkers from 41 different states. Undoubtedly, that number will rise substantially by the time this year’s scheduled walks have ended. The D.C. walk is only one of seven scheduled nationally. Six more walks are scheduled around the U.S. through October in such cities as Boston, San Francisco and New York.

“It was very emotional, it really was,” Felegy said. “I have a very strong history of breast cancer. My mom had breast cancer at 32, she’s a survivor.”

Felegy was only about five years old when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had chicken pox at about the same time her mother was diagnosed, and joked that her family was ‘just really healthy that day.’

“She ended up having a mastectomy,” Felegy said. “I don’t think it hit me until I was in my mid-teens and I learned the ramifications of what breast cancer can do.”

Felegy and Cooper recently had two friends pass away from breast cancer before the walk. Undoubtedly, thoughts of them crossed their minds as they crossed the finish line.

“It was so powerful to see people that were actively in treatment and actively going through cancer walking, or people just walking for those they’ve lost, it was just incredible,” Cooper said. “I’m just astounded that a team of two best friends could raise so much money and do something that we never thought we could do. I just can’t stop smiling when I think about it.”

Progress and cheer teams encouraged them the whole way. Cheer team volunteers handed out bottles of water and ran rest stops for the walkers.

Monuments marked their distance. The walk’s path was scheduled to go through popular tourist site, such as the powerful image of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Monument, which shows the civil rights leader emerging from white granite, the words ‘Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope’ etched into the side.

Although this is only the second walk, the first was in Houston a week prior to the D.C. walk, the two are confident that the money raised will go far for the accelerated research of the disease. According to Felegy 80 percent of the money raised will also be used to help provide access to preventative care for those who cannot pay the fees associated with it.

“I thankfully don’t have personal history with breast cancer in my family, but everybody knows someone in their family that has it,” Cooper said. “So we wanted to raise money to take the fear out of that, but also to take the fear out of preventative care, getting a mammogram, making it easier for people who don’t have the means to get one done, because it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get done.”

By the time the two finished the walk, 600 new breast cancer cases were reported around the U.S. For Felegy and Cooper, that number is substantial, but the money they raised will go a long way in easing the pain and burden placed on the shoulders of those afflicted.

To donate to them, visit the Wonderbra Twins Facebook page.