Flour power: Kidney donor celebrates weight loss in South Park run

One kidney, two flat tires and a 50-pound bag of flour hardly seems like a recipe for a successful five-kilometer run.
But the atypical trifecta gave Rebekah Ceidro no trouble.
“Fifty pounds is the official amount of weight that I’ve lost and kept off, for a whole year,” she explained about the sack she pushed the entire three-plus miles. “It has been gone and stayed gone, so we’re going to try to keep it that way.”

Rebekah Ceidro with her, uh, running buddies during the Smiley Cookie 5K at South Park.
The tires of her son’s stroller, which carried the flour, were casualties of their trek around the South Park Fairgrounds track on the last day of July, during Eat’n Park’s third annual Smiley Cookie 5K.
As for her single kidney, that’s where the story of Rebekah’s romp begins.
Two years ago, the Crafton resident noticed a Facebook post by her friend Chris Moore, with whom she’d worked at the Eat’n Park near her native Latrobe.
“It vaguely said that someone was in need of a kidney transplant,” Ceidro recalled. “I thought maybe he was referring to his parents, or aunt or uncle or someone. So I kind of went on with my day.”
When she read the full post, she realized that Moore was referring to himself.
“He was only 30,” she said. “I thought, this is crazy. Oh, my goodness. Somebody needs to help him. I thought about it for a day or two, and then I thought, well, if I’m thinking this, then it should be me. What’s to stop me from doing that?”
The answer, as it turned out, was 13 pounds, which doctors determined was the minimum amount of weight she needed to drop to help ensure a successful transplant.
“It didn’t feel great,” she admitted. “But I knew that was true.”
Around the same time, Bill Moore, director of safety and security for Eat’n Park Hospitality Group (and no relation to Chris), was in the process of organizing the first Smiley Cookie 5K as a fun way to promote employee fitness. Ceidro promptly registered.
“I said, you know what? I have to get healthy. I might as well start here, because what better way to start than something that’s promoting health and wellness, anyway?” she explained. “And it was truly awful.”
Although Bill Moore was at the finish line – “He’s the biggest cheerleader ever” – greeted her at the finish line with a shiny commemorative medal, she’d had an eye-opening experience.
“I thought to myself, I’m 33. I shouldn’t feel this bad just doing this,” she said. “And it wasn’t like I ran the entire thing. I really struggled with it.”
With the added incentive to get into better shape, Ceidro hung the Smiley Cookie medal from her rear-view mirror and began to take daily runs, taking along son Noak, then age 2, for rides in his stroller. The 13 pounds came off and she kept going, for the sake of her own future.

Rebekah Ceidro’s transformation on behalf of a friend – herself, too – is evident.
“From learning everything about the surgery and how my body would react afterward, it’s really in my best interest to stay healthy so that I don’t end up with problems later in life and have only one kidney,” she explained.
The surgery took place Oct. 9, and both recipient and donor can give positive reports nearly a year later.
“He is doing much better than anybody could have anticipated,” Ceidro, who is assistant manager at the Eat’n Park on Banksville Road, said about Chris Moore. “He says every day he wakes up, he can’t believe the amount of energy that he has, how great he feels.”
In the meantime, Bill Moore is feeling great these days, too, following his own 60-pound weight loss after he took up running a while back. That may have been inevitable, seeing as how all three of his children – Ryan, Amanda and Rachel – ran cross country at Peters Township High School. Ryan apparently gave him particular incentive:
“He said, ‘Dad, you’re always complaining about being so fat. Why don’t you start running?'”
Moore took his new avocation to the rest of the Eat’n Park family when he started the Smiley Cookie 5K in 2016 as a wellness-oriented activity.
“When you look at the statistics, healthy employees get hurt less often, and if they do get hurt, they recover quicker,” the Upper St. Clair native explained. “So I said, let’s find a way to get our employees moving and get a lot healthier.”
This year, the event has grown to nine regional races from May through September, with more than 1,000 participants, Ceidro and her bag of flour among them.
She’s not quite done with her adventures. On Sept. 28, she’ll participate in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s second annual Over the Edge event, raising money by pledging to rappel off the Koppers Building in Downtown Pittsburgh.
“It’s a lofty goal,” she said, “but let’s face it: I’ve met some lofty goals before.”
Just ask Chris Moore.