It’s been 25 years, but Mary Ann Dela Cruz still remembers her first time attending Relay for Life of Hilo.
It was 1992 and Dela Cruz was a nurse in Hilo Medical Center’s pediatric unit. She was approached by her co-worker, Ma’rye Cawagas, who was rallying together a team for the cancer fundraiser’s inaugural year.
“(Cawagas) was a cancer survivor,” Dela Cruz, now 74, recalls. “So she wanted to put a team together and she wanted all of us to be there.”
Dela Cruz and the Malama Nite Bloomers team have participated every year since.
On July 15, the Nite Bloomers, along with nearly 90 other teams representing East Hawaii businesses, government agencies, community groups and nonprofits, will hit the track again for the 2017 Relay For Life of Hilo at Francis Wong Stadium, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. A Relay for Life is also scheduled for this Saturday at Old Kona Airport Park.
The Hilo fundraiser started as a community project by the Lehua Jaycees. It’s since grown to become one of the highest money-grossing Relay for Life events in the state, raising more than $203,000 in 2016 for the American Cancer Society. It’s been outpaced the past three years only by Relay For Life on Kauai.
For comparison, the third largest Relay For Life in Hawaii — Magic Island on Oahu — generates about $120,000 per year.
“The sense of ohana is very strong in East Hawaii,” said Lee Lord, co-lead for Hilo’s event. “Being a community member of Hilo since 1996, I think there’s just a strong sense of community and connectiveness here. Our community members and ohana are more willing to give, because we all know someone — whether it’s in our family or the family next door — who is a patient of cancer.”
The fundraiser got started on a national scale in 1985, founded by a Washington-based colorectal surgeon who decided to raise donation pledges that year by walking laps around a track for 24 hours.
It’s now the American Cancer Society’s flagship fundraiser, collectively garnering more than $5 billion since it began. Most Relay events still feature laps to symbolize the “ongoing fight against cancer,” according to the Cancer Society’s website.
Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States, accounting for one in four deaths nationally.
In Hawaii County, cancer rates are slightly lower than the rest of the state and country, according to 2012 statistics from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though rates of uterine, pancreatic, mouth and cervix cancers are slightly higher on the island than elsewhere in the country.
Some experts say that could be due to higher prevalence of those cancers among certain ethnic groups and higher smoking rates on the island.
Survival rates for all cancers has improved over the years, attributed to improving treatments and growing awareness about disease prevention, among other things.
“Looking to 25 years from now, I hope we’re done with this battle,” Lord said. “With the progress that’s made and the work that science has done, I really think in 25 years we may not stop cancer but we’re going to have medication and regimes that can stop the progress. I would hope at that point that no one will ever have to hear ‘You have cancer.’ But if we’re not there, I seriously believe we’re going to be at a point where we can battle it to where no one is dying from it.”
Many of the donations from Hilo’s Relay fund patient services, Lord said, such as rides to treatments and stays at the Hope Lodge on Oahu, a facility which houses those from out of town receiving treatment. About two-thirds of Hope Lodge guests between December and March hailed from Hawaii Island.
For Dela Cruz, Hilo’s Relay for Life became even more personal in 2011 when she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She soon had surgery and has been in remission for several years.
This year, she and the other Nite Bloomers also will attend the event for the first time without Cawagas, who died earlier this year following health issues.
“(Attending Relay For Life) after you have cancer, you just want a cure,” Dela Cruz said. “You want to know that ‘OK, there’s a cure, and it can be taken care of.’”
”… When you attend, it’s really kind of fun, it’s like a fair, but you also need to remember that this is for life,” she added. “They’ll show pictures of cancer survivors, and these are real people who are here. And when they feature the luminaries for people, it’s in their honor and in their memory. That’s why we do it.”
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.