Tour de Rock ride partly for the love of Mike
When Saanich detective Janis Carmena leans into the epic hills and emotional valleys of the Cops for Cancer charity bike tour, which starts Sunday, she’ll be keeping her word to a man whose spirit paves the course.
“You need to do this, Janis,” said brother-in-law Mike Lawless, a longtime Tour de Rock volunteer and Saanich police officer, before he died of cancer in January 2015.
“So this is fulfilling a promise to him,” said Carmena, 45, a teacher-turned-cop. “It will be healing in the process.”
Tour de Rock riders will travel by motor vehicle to Port Alice on Saturday, leaving from Admirals Walk shopping centre between 7 and 7:30 a.m.
The team of Vancouver Island police officers start riding on Sunday. They will spend the next two weeks riding 1,100 kilometres from Port Alice to Victoria to raise money for Camp Goodtimes, pediatric cancer research and other Canadian Cancer Society programs for sick children.
Every year brings a new team of cyclists, along with a fresh crop of parents blindsided by a cancer diagnosis, and their children, who seem heartbreakingly optimistic.
Lawless rode the tour in 2004. After that, he travelled with the team each year on the support crew, whipping up students before school visits and high-fiving riders, throwing his arms around those who needed it most.
Three months before he died, almost 100 former Tour de Rock riders, representing 17 years of the tour, rode into his Central Saanich cul de sac in what was called Miles for Mike.
One by one, they rode toward the strapping six-foot-five cop. With each new face, Lawless came to life. He took command of traffic control and the shoring up of riders who were sad, angry or awkward with emotion. He was once again the comforter, rather than the one to be comforted.
“For the first time in a long time, we saw the real Mike come back out again,” Carmena said.
It was just prior to the riders’ arrival that Lawless talked to Carmena about the tour that each year overwhelmed the duplex that the Lawless family and the Carmena family share.
Now the tour has returned to the home. “It’s the right time to do it,” Carmena said. “This is what he would want.”
Members of both families will be at the tour’s stop in Comox on Wednesday. Carmena, whose mother died of cancer at age 50, will shed her auburn locks for donations.
Lawless always gave the team a special talk before tackling the socalled hump into Port Alberni. “F— the hump” he’d jokingly whisper in rider’s ears.
But the biggest challenge, Carmena said, will be seeing the children with cancer.
Carmena, who wears a bracelet that reads “F— Cancer,” hopes she can summon her brother-in-law’s strength.
“He had an excellent sense of what people needed at the time.” ceharnett@timescolonist.com