Making strides:
Breast cancer walk honors loved ones, seeks cure
“You can’t talk to one person who hasn’t been touched by it.” Jill Surdyka, an Avon 39 national ambassador
Marilyn Luma embarked on the trek up and down the steep hills of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin County — and all the way back — to honor the 20th anniversary of her “stage four, getyour-affairs-in-order” breast cancer diagnosis.
Eleni Hulman made the same hike for the people she knows who have been affected by breast cancer, their names written on a piece of notebook paper that she tucked in a pouch kept close to her body.
Martha Domont walked in remembrance of her sister, who died from breast cancer in 2000, and of her own battle with the same disease five years later.
In all, 1,900 people laced up their walking shoes, threw on their brightest pink attire and descended on the streets of San Francisco for Saturday morning’s start of the Avon 39 Walk to End Breast Cancer — a 39.3mile, two-day walk to raise money, awareness and support around the disease.
“The walk is not easy,” said Jill Surdyka, an Avon 39 national ambassador. “But we all know fighting breast cancer isn’t easy either.”
About 1 in 8 women in the U.S., or nearly 250,000 each year, will ultimately develop breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
“You can’t talk to one person who hasn’t been touched by it,” Surdyka said. “That’s why this is so important.”
The walk started at Fort Mason at 6 a.m. and sent participants on a path that wrapped through the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge to a campground in Corte Madera, where they would spend the night before making the hike back on Sunday.
To participate in the walk, registrants were required to raise at least $1,800, which goes toward local and national breast cancer care and research.
“Raising the money is the easy part,” said Luma, a 69-year-old resident of Watsonville. It was her “at least eighth year” of walking, she said.
“I feel strongly that I was allowed to survive for a reason,” Luma said, taking a breather after making it up the hill to Lafayette Park, mile 6.7 of the 26.2-mile route for the day. “I really feel like this is my job now.”
Luma first got involved with the walk after looking for an outlet to show support for others with the disease she had survived. After a not-sosuccessful attempt at becoming a volunteer counselor, she realized the Avon 39 was a better fit.
For this year’s walk, Luma assembled a team of friends and family members who wore tutus and tie-dyed shorts. Together they raised over $15,000.
In total, this year’s Avon 39 walk in San Francisco raised about $4.4 million.
Hulman, a 49-year-old San Mateo resident and Avon representative, joined the event for the first time in 2006 when her cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Shortly after that walk, Hulman found out that two mothers from her kids’ preschool also had been diagnosed with the disease. Two year ago, Hulman’s mother was diagnosed. She later found out her grandmother and great-aunt had at one point had breast cancer.
“So I decided to do the walk again,” Hulman said.
On Saturday, Hulman carried a list of 14 women who have fought the disease. That breast cancer is so widespread actually made raising $1,800 much easier than she’d expected.
“When you start asking for money, you realize how many people have such strong ties to this disease,” Hulman said. “It’s amazing how many people this touches.”
Domont, a 63-year-old San Anselmo resident, participated in this year’s walk for well over her 10th consecutive time — including through her own experience with breast cancer.
After losing her sister, Mitzi, to the disease, Domont was diagnosed in 2005. Through a series of surgeries and countless rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, Domont said she never gave up hope. And she never stopped walking.
“I’ve had my thyroid removed, a double mastectomy, the whole gamut,” she said. “But here I am 11 years later on my 760th mile for Avon. I have kept walking and I will keep doing the walk till I can’t walk anymore.”