{"id":204,"date":"2017-04-26T00:27:50","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T00:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2025-06-18T14:46:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T14:46:18","slug":"the-story-behind-our-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/the-story-behind-our-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"The story behind our bird"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>\u201c<em>I\u2019ve got your bird. Do as I say, and no one gets hurt.<\/em>\u201d<\/h3>\n<p>These were the chilling words whispered in my ear in the middle of our 2015 event.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A group of survivors had birdnapped our beloved Fancy the Flamingo<\/strong> (she\u2019s the giant inflatable flamingo that greets our runners at the finish line).<\/p>\n<p>The Flamingo Bandits demanded a <strong>$50,000 ransom, payable in the form of 1000 free mammograms<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The Pledge the Pink family rallied. Bake sales, car washes, and lemonade stands dotted the country as everyone pitched in to raise the ransom money.<\/p>\n<p>A tip line and reward were set up, and a candlelight vigil extended for weeks, as supporters flocked to the abduction site.<\/p>\n<p>To demonstrate our solidarity and free Fancy as quickly as possible, <strong>we created the Flocks of Love<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We sold 1058 plastic pink flamingos<\/strong> to Fancy-lovers people across the globe.<\/p>\n<p>Each bird was adopted for $50, and we were able to pay the ransom demand, free Fancy, and fund over 1000 mammograms.<\/p>\n<p>Our beautiful Flocks of Love was displayed set up on Callawassie Island during our 2016 event.<\/p>\n<p>It was jaw dropping, and an intensely poignant display of honor and gratitude, <strong>knowing that each bird was adopted in dedication of a loved one. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And that bird, in turn, will help save the life of another.<\/p>\n<p>Our flock also set a <strong>Guinness World Record<\/strong>: never before had so many garden flamingos been gathered before.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the power of love. The power of flocks of love.<\/p>\n<p>Fancy is under 24-hour security these days and wears GPS tracking device so she\u2019ll never go missing again.<\/p>\n<p>But we want to continue growing her flock, funding more mammograms, saving more lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got your bird. Do as I say, and no one gets hurt.\u201d These were the chilling words whispered in my ear in the middle of our 2015 event. A group of survivors had birdnapped our beloved Fancy the Flamingo (she\u2019s the giant inflatable flamingo that greets our runners at the finish line). The Flamingo &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/the-story-behind-our-bird\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The story behind our bird<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,25,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-21","category-25","category-fundraising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pledgethepink.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}