The totals are in and Laura Perfetto said she couldn’t be more pleased with the performance of her students at Pilgrim High School. Despite having just three weeks to fundraise, and coming up against tight financial times, her physical education and health classes raised $2,743.51 to support breast cancer research and awareness.

“These kids were like full court press,” Perfetto said last week. “I can’t believe they raised so much, especially with the economy being so tough.”

As an incentive for the junior and senior students at the Warwick high school, Perfetto teamed up with the Cranston Applebees, who catered a lunch for the class that raised the most. The Pilgrim totals were added to the money raised by the restaurant branch. Combined, they collected close to $6,000 this year. Perfetto worked for the franchise for 12 years and knew they would be happy to help. In fact, they have a reputation for it.

“Every year we take on a fundraiser,” said General Manager Vin Narcisi. “We do it, not from a business standpoint, but we do it because we’re a family here.”

The cause was important to the restaurant as well. Narcisi’s sister-in-law has stage 4 breast cancer and several of his co-workers have faced the disease with family and friends.

“It’s bringing communities together,” Perfetto added.

She tries to engage her students in at least one or two fundraisers each year, in hopes of getting them excited about important causes. Last year, they raised $2,500.

“Our goal was to beat our amount from last year so the fact that we did is incredible,” she said.

Over the past decade, Narcisi said the Cranston Applebees has raised thousands of dollars for worthy causes like breast cancer and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which named the restaurant the Donor of the Year two years ago. Each holiday season, the employees also pool their money and fundraise in the franchise to “adopt” as many as 50 children to buy gifts for.

“Every day you try to do good,” he said.

The Cranston community has been generous to Narcisi. Every time he looks to them to give back, he says the response has been overwhelming. His restaurant was awarded the Heart and Soul Community Achievement award by the national chain for their involvement in the city.

“It’s self-rewarding,” Narcisi said, thanking his patrons – more than half of which he says are repeat customers – as well as the Pilgrim students.

With last month’s focus on breast cancer awareness, Perfetto knew the time was ripe to get young people involved in a project that is close to her heart.

“Not only do we cover this in our curriculum but also almost everyone is affected by some kind of cancer,” she said.

Perfetto is a participant in the annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event, and this year encouraged students and teachers to join her for the four-mile walk on Oct. 25. Diane Hemingway led the Cranston Applebees walking team.

“She made some big announcements to get the whole school involved,” said fellow teacher Courtney DeSousa, who donated and walked in the event. “I’m very surprised because normally it’s hard to collect money for anything, whether it’s a class event or a dance but for a good cause they were really getting out there.”

In order to solicit donations, the group hosted a student-faculty football game as well as a dress down day.

Emily Hurton, a senior from the winning class, raised the most of any individual student with $192. Much of that came from her own pocket, including tips she collected while working at the Smokey Bones restaurant. Although Hurton nonchalantly shrugged it off, saying it was for a worthy cause, her work did not go unnoticed by classmates. When asked what their secret to success was, Ryan Martin knew there was a lot of hard work behind it.

“One, we had her,” he said, nodding toward Hurton, “and everyone just gave a little bit of money.”

Applebees provided $25 gift cards to Hurton and the other three standout fundraisers.

“It’s a nice thing and the kids really do enjoy it,” Narcisi said. “We like to make them feel like they’ve achieved something.”

Self-proclaimed competitive student Leah Furney, a standout athlete at Pilgrim, said that collecting donations during lunch was not as challenging as they anticipated.

“It didn’t really take that much convincing because everyone thought it was a good idea,” she said.

When Perfetto pitted the 11th grade physical education class against the 12th grade health class, though, things got serious.

“I think the fact that you got the juniors involved helped,” said senior Victoria Brauer, one of the top fundraisers from the health class. “Ms. P didn’t think we could raise that much money.”

Perfetto laughed in response, adding how proud she was of both classes.

“We’re just trying to find a cure and this just raises awareness,” she said. “We had a lot of fun.”