We believe that we (along with your help) can make a very real and positive difference for causes that are near and dear to our hearts. We also believe in giving back whenever possible.

There are dozens of causes that we define as personally being near and dear to our hearts, but we have narrowed down this list to 5 causes that we want to draw attention to and focus on:

• Melanoma (Skin Cancer)
• Addiction (Mental Health)
• Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
• Alzheimer’s Disease
• Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

That is why we will be donating a portion of every sale that we make on Corkaine.com to each of these causes. However, since we are a brand new company, we can only donate to one cause at this time so we will be starting our donations with our “current cause”. 

Our current cause is Melanoma Awareness and a portion of every sale will go to The Melanoma Research Foundation. 

We want to help bring more awareness to the dangers of Melanoma and hope that we can help save lives through education and the early detection of skin cancers, particularly Melanoma.

There are 3 types of skin cancer that you should be aware of: 

1. Basal Cell Carcinoma – the most common form of skin cancer but is also the least dangerous as it rarely spread (metastasize).
2. Squamous Cell Carcinoma – the second most common form of skin cancer that can spread (metastasize) quickly if not treated and removed early.  
3. Melanoma – the most dangerous and the most deadly form of skin cancer as it is known to spread (metastasize) quickly if not caught early.  

You can learn more about Melanoma on these websites:

1. Melanoma.org
2. Skincancer.org
3. Cancer.org

Early detection can save your life…just as it did for our co-founder, Drew Restivo who had a suspicious freckle biopsied that came back as Stage 1 Melanoma.

Drew’s Grandfather was diagnosed with Melanoma stage 4 approximately 3 months prior to Drew setting up his first appointment to get his skin checked. He passed away 11 months after his diagnosis. If it wasn’t for his Grandfather being diagnosed with Melanoma and Drew’s wife Brandi (who is a nurse) being so adamant that Drew gets his questionable freckle looked at ASAP, Drew says he would have never thought to get his skin checked for cancer. It’s just not something that he thought would happen to him as his freckle (to him) didn’t look dangerous at all.

Once at the dermatologist appointment in Denver, Colorado, the dermatologist told Drew that he didn’t think his freckle was Melanoma, but that he would biopsy it just to be safe. It was just 4 days later on 2/12/2016 that his dermatologist called and told him that the report came back as positive for Stage 1 Melanoma and that Drew needed to come back in to have more skin removed (a 3cm wide local excision) from where the Melanoma was located. That phone call was life-changing. The good news is that it was caught early and Drew fully recovered. The bad news is that Drew wishes he knew more about Melanoma so that he could have helped his Grandfather sooner.

To help put this story into perspective and show you how real Melanoma is, we have attached the actual photos of the before and after the process of the Melanoma that was removed from Drew’s shoulder (see below or turn away now if easily nauseous). We are not doing this to scare anyone. We just want to help educate people and bring more awareness to Melanoma and hopefully save some lives. We also want to show people that not all Melanomas are scary black moles. Some can be abnormal freckles, just like Drew’s.

Please get your skin checked by a dermatologist if you or someone you know has any questionable freckles, moles, or sores. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…literally speaking.