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Tulsan Susan Dale’s reality show, “Livin’ 4 Racin’ Time,” chronicles her family’s attempts to balance a racing team with promoting a cause: Hepatitis C testing and awareness.
On any given Saturday afternoon, a local camera crew covered in red dirt will be filming a particular racecar with one visible, burning message: Get tested for Hepatitis C.
“The message is simple,” says Susan Dale, a local comedian. “We’re not talking treatment, we’re not talking about anything else other than just get tested and find out.”
Dale is the mastermind behind “Livin’ 4 Racin’ Time,” a reality show based on her family and their efforts to get the word out about Hepatitis C through racecar driving. She says her younger brother, Allen, a part-time professional racecar driver, first made her aware of how few people know about the virus when he donated the side of his racecar to the message to help a friend raise money for a Hepatitis C nonprofit.
Through her research, Dale, whose father served in the Air Force in the 1950s, also learned that one out of five veterans contract Hepatitis C. As a result, she wanted to use her local production company, Lynn Baxter Studios, to assist the cause.
Dale also went to the Tulsa Health Department, which detects on average 300 cases of acute and chronic Hepatitis C every year in Tulsa County. The virus causes inflammation of the liver, which can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer. Hepatitis C is spread when blood from an infected person enters the body of a person who is not infected.
“I thought, if anything, I can do a public service announcement,” she says. “That was the original idea … I really didn’t intend to turn this into what it’s turned into.”
After receiving funding for the public service announcements, Dale decided to take her plan a step further. She asked her two brothers, both racecar drivers; her parents; and a family friend to star in a reality series following the family and their race team as they struggle to compete while promoting a cause.
“You’ve got the action of a race team, the quirkiness of a family,” she says. “In a race team, you’re going to have action. You’re going to see excitement … We had a car blow up. We had car leaks. None of this was actually planned.”
Dale’s crew filmed the pilot at a race in Hallett, Okla., in October. They had two of their own cars on the track and a crowd of supporters and spectators.
“We had people who had Hepatitis C, people who have family members with Hepatitis C, people who work with people who have Hepatitis C,” Dale says. “More than 10 families came up to me to say, ‘Thank you. Finally somebody is doing something.’”
Dale says her family is filming six episodes, after which her production company will begin pitching the show to the local cable market. Currently, she says that they are seeking sponsors and volunteers to help get the message out about getting tested for Hepatitis C.
For more information about “Livin’ 4 Racin’ Time” and to see a trailer of the show, visit lynnbaxterstudios.com.
