Photo by Jessica Stewart / St. Joseph News-Press

Elena Helmerick runs Thursday afternoon, her 24th birthday, west on 36 highway between Stewartsville and St. Joseph. Ms. Helmerick is running across the United States to raise money and awareness to hunger issues and diabetes.

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Elena Helmerick turned 24 on a stretch of state-maintained pavement east of St. Joseph. To celebrate, she ran six hours.

Happy birthday, Elena. Any gifts in mind?

“To get to Kansas,” she says with a smile.

And that’s part of the drill for Ms. Helmerick, one state after the next on a 3,200 mile-run across the nation.

Her celebration Thursday stood as part of her mission, a three-month-plus, cross-continent jog to raise awareness about hunger issues, diabetes research, family farms and healthy eating, among other things.

She dipped her toes in the waters at Virginia Beach, Va., on April 1, beginning the journey. By the time she gets to redwood country of northern California in mid-summer, Ms. Helmerick hopes to have done good for others while fulfilling some personal dreams.

An event seven years ago planted a seed in Elena. She decided to run to her

grandmother’s house.

The girl lived in Laramie. Her grandmother lived in Cheyenne, 50 miles away.

“I come up with these crazy ideas,” she said during a break Thursday along U.S. 36 Highway. On learning of the plans for this spring and summer, her family offered no discouragement.

“I talked about it for so long, I guess they just thought I would do it,” Ms. Helmerick said.

Preparing to enter the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in the fall, she runs with a message of the efficiencies and environmental benefits of buying locally produced foods.

Since her college graduation in May 2007, she has worked on a pasture-based farm in northern Virginia where a rancher changed longtime practices to produce healthier food and better conserve the land.

Most farm-to-market activities, she explained, are “very oil intensive.” By aiming locally grown products for local sales, “it makes a lot more sense, energy-conservation wise.”

The charities she hopes to help, World Hunger Year and RunDiabetesRun, were chosen for personal passion. Type 2 diabetes is linked to diet.

“It goes hand-in-hand with what I’m doing,” she said.

Her traveling companions are Nick Lehecka, her boyfriend of five years, and dogs Greta and Miles. She runs every day, usually split into morning and afternoon sessions. A recreational vehicle serves as the traveling headquarters, and she posts a journal daily on the Internet.

A Wyoming native who lived part of her childhood in Florida, Ms. Helmerick was an all-state runner during high school in Sheridan, Wyo. She moved east to attend North Carolina State University, majoring in animal science and running for the Wolfpack cross country and track teams. She earned one of the school’s scholar-athlete awards.

Her trot across Northwest Missouri, in addition to taking place on her birthday, proved a landmark of sorts for the journey. True, she still has 2,000 miles to run, but her passage over the Pony Express Bridge would carry a meaning.

“Missouri is like the gateway to the West,” she said. “Now, I feel like I’m on my way out West.”

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.