A Suffolk Subway restaurant was one of the top five among all 1,200 stores that participated in a recent pin-up fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association.

The Centerbrooke location, near Sentara Obici Hospital, pulled in $3,000, according to Bristy Ball, vice president and director of operations for Magnum Enterprises, which owns most of the Subway restaurants in Suffolk.

Her group raised about $4,500, and the 165 stores in the market raised $56,920 for the STOP Diabetes campaign.

“It was driven, I would say, 120 percent by the backing of the store manager and the employees,” Ball said of the Centerbrooke restaurant. “They really got behind this program and pushed.”

The Subway restaurants in the market also support the Step Out: Walk to Stop Diabetes. The Smithfield walk at Windsor Castle Park is coming up Oct. 6.

Ball said the company has worked hard in recent years to offer healthier choices.

“They’ve made leaps and bounds,” she said, noting the importance of finding a cure for diabetes. “Honestly, I believe pretty much everybody out there has or knows someone that is affected by diabetes.”

For her employee Dylan Wilson, who is the store manager at the North Main Street location near Farm Fresh, the fight against diabetes is important.

Wilson, now 25, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 11 years old. Type 1 diabetes is when the body stops producing insulin, a hormone needed to regulate sugar in the body.

“We didn’t have any previous family history of it,” he said. “It just kind of came out of the blue.”

Wilson said he never had any other health problems until his diabetes diagnosis. He started to lose weight, was constantly tired and drank a lot of water.

His parents “got so concerned they took me to the hospital,” he said. Doctors decided the boy was growing and needed to take a vitamin supplement.

Two days later, Wilson did not feel better, so his father took him back to the doctor and demanded a blood test. The hospital called the house around midnight that night to tell his parents his blood sugar was 980 — normal is under 100 — and he needed to be at the hospital right away.

Wilson stayed in the hospital for four days, getting his blood sugar under control and learning about how to handle his new illness, including insulin injections.

“It was hard in the beginning,” he said. “It’s hard when you’re that age to accept you have to do something like that for the rest of your life, or until there’s a cure found.”

However, having diabetes also helped him grow up, he said.

“You have to take on that life-sustaining responsibility,” he said. “It’s not something you can avoid or push off. I feel that it helped me develop a strong sense of independence.”

Of course, there have been drawbacks over the years. Some former employers did not understand his need to take time to manage his illness, and he was unable to join the military as he had hoped.

But Subway has been “one of the best moves I’ve ever made,” Wilson said.

“You’re constantly around healthy food,” he said. “It’s a lot more positive atmosphere than most restaurants.”

For more information on the American Diabetes Association’s fight, visit www.diabetes.org.