WATCH ABOVE: She has baked thousands of cookies for charity but this week Hazel Akai is hanging up her apron. Elaine Yong takes a look at Hazel’s charitable efforts and the passion behind them.
VANCOUVER – For the past 10 years Hazel Akai has whipped up thousands of cookies for charity.
This week she’s retiring from her job at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the grandmother from Port Coquitlam is getting ready to hang up her ‘baking hat’.
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But in the last decade she has baked 76 dozen cookies, mostly chocolate chip, almost every week. She only scaled back to once every two weeks when her grandson was born.
“Just a wooden spoon and a bowl and that’s it,” said Akai. “People think that I have a Mixmaster or whatever and I don’t.”
All those cookies have turned into more than $60,000 in donations for various charities.
“I’ve had cancer, I’m a cancer survivor,” said Akai. “For 24 years now. And I do mostly cancer. Like Terry Fox, CIBC Run for the Cure.”
At the end of this week when Hazel says goodbye, it will be bittersweet for everyone.
Sure the cookies are replaceable, but the beloved baker definitely is not.
– With files from Elaine Yong
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