After he won the “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament in 2019, which comes with $100,000 in prize money, Avi Gupta — then just 17 years old — decided that he was going to donate more than $10,000 of his winnings to pancreatic cancer research in honor of an idol of his, Alex Trebek. Now, after a year of raising money, he’s making an even bigger contribution to the cause — more than $200K.
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Gupta won the 2019 Teen Tournament, which filmed before Trebek went public with his diagnosis in March. The teen, who is now a freshman at Columbia University in New York, says that Trebek’s experience with the disease inspired him to learn more about it — and eventually, to raise money and awareness for the cause.
“This is something that the director of the early detection center at the cancer institute I donated to noted: it’s very important when you’re fighting these sort of long-term battles, these wars, against diseases like cancer, that you continue to build public support and kind of marshal the public behind you,” Gupta says. “Cancer is a disease that really affects all of us. We all know or have lost someone to cancer. So, I think really my goal in raising additional money was not just financial resources and the multiplication of my donation, but the increased awareness that would come as a result of leveraging my platform in that way.”
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That’s a wrap on the #TeenTournament! Congratulations to our champ, Avi Gupta!
Why Pancreatic Cancer?
When it came to his inspiration, Gupta says that hearing about Trebek’s diagnosis was quite hard for him emotionally, considering how much he looks up to the long-time “Jeopardy!” host, and how much of an honor it was to finally meet him during taping last year.
“I am a big fan. I have been for a long time,” Gupta says. “It’s always a treat in life to meet one of your heroes. I felt like when I met him … when I was playing the game, that I had known him for 10 years from watching the show. He was sort of omnipresent in my family living room when I was growing up.”
“I appreciated that he always seemed like the smartest guy on TV. He always had the right questions to ask,” Gupta adds.
For Gupta, as for millions of other “Jeopardy!” fans, Trebek has inspired a kind of curiosity — a love of learning. Hearing about Trebek’s diagnosis inspired the young contestant to learn more about pancreatic cancer, and inspired a strong desire in him to encourage others to learn as well.
“I wanted to find out how bad the diagnosis was, because stage 4 cancer doesn’t sound good at all,” Gupta says. “I wanted to find out how bad pancreatic cancer was specifically, and it turns out it’s one of the worst. I reached out to OHSU Knight Cancer Institute to learn about what they were doing there and I feel very lucky, thanks to ‘Jeopardy!’, to have been able to — at the age of 18 — give to support something I care about deeply in honor of someone I admire very much.”
A lot of the efforts with pancreatic cancer now, Gupta mentioned, revolve around early detection. Pancreatic cancer is a particularly difficult cancer to treat because it often doesn’t present specific symptoms and is diagnosed in late stages as a result of that. Trebek, like so many others, was diagnosed at stage 4. There are currently efforts underway to come up with ways to detect pancreatic cancer early, when the treatment methods that are currently available are much more effective.
Dr. Anirban Maitra, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains some of the challenges with screening for pancreatic cancer.
Gupta, however, remains hopeful — and told SurvivorNet he believes we can all do our part in the fight against cancer, however small that part may be.
“I firmly believe that our scientists, our researchers, our clinicians, are winning this battle against cancer, in all of its forms,” he said. “But we, as members of the public, need to help them do more in any way that we can, whether that’s raising money or raising awareness — or just spreading the word — I think we all can chip in because cancer really does affect all of us.”
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