Live Like Cash Day Made National News. Thank You.
On September 30, the story of what was on Cash's phone ran on the Associated Press.
Two years to the day after we lost him, the Live Like Cash Gaudio Foundation's press release went out on the wire and landed on AP News, Google News, and 762 news outlets, including the AP Newspress, TV affiliate sites, and publications across the country, according to the distribution report. People in states we've never set foot in read about a 19-year-old from Smith Mountain Lake who chose the Cross for his lock screen, and then they went and put it on theirs.
We did not expect that. We're still catching our breath.
What we asked
If you're new here, this is the short version. Cash Gaudio was shot and killed in his own driveway on September 30, 2024. He was 19. When the police returned his belongings that December, his father and sister turned on his phone at the dining room table and the first thing on the screen was Jesus, head bowed, wearing the crown of thorns. It's what Cash was looking at when he picked up that phone and called his mom.
So this year, instead of asking for memories, we asked for something harder. We asked you to put Cash's lock screen on your own phone for the day, to let it interrupt you every one of the hundred-plus times you reached for it, and to remember what Christ did for you.
What you did
You did it. All day long.
Screenshots came in from church small groups and men's groups, from teammates and coaches, from Cash's old classmates and from people who never met him. They came from Virginia and Florida and from states we had to look up on a map to believe. Shannon and Micah read every single one.
Somewhere in that pile, a stranger picked up their phone, saw the Cross, and asked a question they hadn't asked before. That's the whole point. That's the work Cash is still doing.
Thank you
To everyone who downloaded the image, set it, and left it there: thank you.
To everyone who posted a screenshot and tagged the foundation so we could see it: thank you. We reshared every one we could find.
To the pastors and group leaders who sent it to their people, the teachers who mentioned it in class, and the friends who texted it to someone who needed it: thank you.
To the news desks and editors who ran the story on a day when they had plenty of other things to run: thank you.
And to Cash's mom, who wrote the email that started all of this: thank you for telling it the way only you could.
Leave it on
You don't have to take it off. A lot of us aren't. If Jesus is still interrupting you in a month, good.
The image is still free at LiveLikeCash.org/Sept30, sized for every phone, and it will stay there. Send it to someone who needs it.
What's next
Two weeks from Saturday is Gears for Gaudio, our second annual car and truck show, October 17 from noon to 6 p.m. at Blue Ridge Community Church in Forest. Two years in, you've given more than $250,000 in Cash's name and put 13 Live Like Cash Gaudio Scholars through school. We're going to pass $1 million by the end of 2028, and the next step is a parking lot full of cars and the people who love him.
Live Like Cash.
The Live Like Cash Gaudio Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in memory of Cash Gaudio. It funds scholarships for student-athletes with a heart for God and their community. Read the full press release on EIN Presswire or AP News.
