Last month, Central Oregonian Lawnae Hunter was named the Lifetime Achievement Award winner in the Women of the Year contest we held with the Bend Chamber.
This month, Hunter is among eight finalists for another big award: The American Heart Association’s “Stroke Hero” award. The award, to be announced April 20, is centering around, “Honoring those who have showcased resilience and outstanding progress in the stroke community,” according to an AHA web page.
Hunter, a real estate professional and owner of Plus Property Management in Bend, experienced a stroke five years ago—an experience that changed her life, she told the Source during our Women of the Year interviews. It caused her to rethink her priorities, and to focus more on giving back.
Part of that giving back came in the way of the founding of Stroke Awareness Oregon, an advocacy group that, as its name suggests, works to promote things such as recognizing the signs of stroke, and the importance of getting a prospective stroke victim to the hospital as soon as possible. She often explains how she was on a Caribbean island when her stroke hit, and lost valuable time getting to a hospital that could treat it.
Hunter and Stroke Awareness Oregon have also been at work on a play centered around stroke awareness, originally scheduled to debut this summer in Bend.
Voting in the American Heart Association’s voters’ choice awards is going on now to April 2. People can vote once per day for the nominee of their choice at
This article appears in Mar 18-25, 2020.
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