Thirty-one days. Thirty-one miles. Thirty-one people in our community who are fighting breast cancer, who beat it, or who we lost.
Every one of their stories aired on KAFE 104.1 and lives here. This is all of them, in one place.
These stories are the whole point. If one of them makes you book the appointment you’ve been putting off, they did their job. Run for them. Get screened for you.
Week one
Day 1 – Nina
Charlie Maxx’s mom. Charlie lost her in 2016 and has run a mile a day every October since, which is where this whole idea came from.
Day 2 – Nana Rosemary
A survivor, with a tribute from her grandson serving in the Army that’s worth your four minutes.
Day 3 – Elaine
A survivor and a stellar mom of four who never stopped finding a reason to laugh, even through the hardest of it.
Week two
Day 4 – Cathy
A survivor, and the mom of our own Scott Less over at KISM. Also a die-hard Broncos fan, which we’ve chosen to forgive.
Day 5 – Anne
Cancer free for four years. At diagnosis she had three tumors, bilaterally, of two different types – and it was caught early.
Day 6 – Aunt Starr and Aunt Rachel
Two aunts from one family, nominated by their niece Rachael.
Day 7 – Karissa
Thirty weeks pregnant when she found out. On what she’s teaching her kids through it: “Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean we can’t be grateful.”
Day 8 – Pam
Diagnosed days before her story aired, and it wasn’t her first time – she’d been through it twelve years earlier.
Day 9 – Michelle
Her cancer hid on every mammogram she ever had because of dense tissue. She found it herself.
Day 10 – Tara
She came on live with us and talked about the part of recovery nobody warns you about.
Week three
Day 11 – Josephine
Nominated by her niece Jasmine, who wanted her aunt remembered on the radio.
Day 12 – Dawn
Diagnosed at 31, and now the person who shows up for everybody else going through it.
Day 13 – Kato
A rare form of breast cancer that only about 18% of patients get. She eats clean, trains daily, and did everything right.
Day 14 – Sheryl
Diagnosed three times and cancer free twice before it took her in 2017. Her daughter remembers the Lego worlds and the good cookie bars.
Day 15 – Rosalee
In the fight, and getting as strong as she could before chemo started.
Day 16 – Kena
A survivor and a fierce advocate for early detection, who joined us live at Dave’s Birthday Broadcast.
Day 17 – Shannon
Diagnosed at 29, months from finishing grad school, with no family history at all. Cancer free since 2011.
Week four
Day 18 – Mary
Diagnosed in 2017 and through six months of chemotherapy. Cancer free since 2018.
Day 19 – Bev
Fifteen years of it, quietly, while raising two young boys. She hated wigs, so she wore hats and looked perfect in them.
Day 20 – Michele
Found at a routine visit after two clear mammograms. She’d just hiked Kilimanjaro.
Day 21 – Paula
She nominated herself, and in October she rang the bell three times with twelve people watching.
Day 22 – Lynda
She almost didn’t come on the air because she thought her story was too small. Her daughters talked her into it.
Day 23 – Deb
Caught early, treated, done – and then she spent years on the radio making going in sound like a normal thing to do.
Day 24 – Shirley
Her daughter Marla remembers her smile, her warmth, and a list of all the times she didn’t give up.
The final week
Day 25 – Nana Kathy
Her daughter Sierra, an ultrarunner, says her mom completed the ultra marathon nobody willingly signs up for.
Day 26 – Monica
Eight years of surgeries and treatment, all of it to stay here for four boys.
Day 27 – Jen
Five generations of breast cancer, a BRCA2 mutation, and two separate cancers at once. She’s here, and so are her mom and her uncle.
Day 28 – Carol and Korissa
A mother and daughter, lost within the same year. Korissa was twenty.
Day 29 – Robin
She started dreaming about her late mother, checked herself because of it, and found a lump.
Day 30 – Everyone who walked the last mile with us
No single name on this one. It belonged to everybody who showed up.
Day 31 – The roll call
One more mile, and all thirty-one names read out loud.
The weekly roundups
● Week two
● Every Feel Good Moment, including the audio
What we learned from all of it
Read these back to back and the same things keep coming up.
Early catches make short stories. Several of the women on this page apologized for how brief their story was – caught early, treated, done. That’s the outcome everything here is aiming at.
A clear mammogram isn’t a guarantee. More than one woman here was found by her own hands or her doctor’s, after scans that showed nothing. Know what normal feels like on you, and ask whether you have dense tissue.
Young doesn’t mean safe, and no family history doesn’t either. We ran for women diagnosed at 20, at 29, at 30 weeks pregnant, at 31. Several had no family history at all.
It isn’t only a women’s disease. One family on this page includes an uncle who spent his career treating breast cancer and then got it himself.
Advocate for yourself. Nearly every survivor here said some version of it. If something feels wrong, keep asking until somebody looks harder.
Thank you
Run 31 only worked because a lot of people said yes. Here’s who made it happen.
They donated every single Run 31 shirt. All of them. That sea of pink walking up Northwest Ave existed because they said yes without being asked twice.
They put up a pair of Topo running shoes for the drawing, which gave people something to chase all month and got more than a few of them off the couch in week one.
They made the very special sugar cookies that showed up at the finish line. You know the ones. They were the talk of the walk.
The Feel Good Moment is their spot, and they handed it over for the entire month so these thirty-one stories could have it instead. That’s a real thing to give up, and they didn’t hesitate.
Mt. Baker Imaging
They hosted our finish line and opened their doors for their annual walk-in mammogram day, so people could go straight from the walk to getting screened.
And thank you to the Whatcom Humane Society Thrift Store for letting a crowd of us gather in their parking lot, and to the Meridian High School Marching Band and the WCC Cheerleaders for making a Friday morning feel like an event.
And thank you to everybody who showed up
To every person who sent us a name. To every family who trusted us with a story that was hard to tell. To everyone who logged a mile, posted a photo, wore the shirt, or walked up Northwest Ave on a Friday morning in October.
This was a community thing from the first day. You made it one.
Run for them. Get screened for you.
Questions, or a story you want to share? Email patrice@kafe.com or text 360.676.5233.
