Juliana Cochnar learned that her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer while Juliana was out traveling the world for two years. When she stopped in Australia, she called her mother, Barbara, who shared the news. The first thing Cochnar said to her mother was, “I’m coming home to help you,” but her mother had a different outlook. “Oh, no you’re not. You’re staying and doing what I can’t do.” Months later, when her travels were finished, Juliana returned home to her mother’s side.
What happened to Cochnar from her travels and witnessing her mother’s challenges made her aware of life’s bigger picture. “I had to give back,” she said, seated across from me at a San Francisco sidewalk café. “More women were going to struggle with this disease.” It’s not an uncommon path, individuals moved to make a change in the world when someone they love is struck with adversity. But what Cochnar found when she set out to make a difference was that things took on a life of their own.
That next fall, in September of 2003, Cochnar began her work. She reacquainted herself with the same charity that she had volunteered with while in her sorority at college, Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. Race for the Cure started as a promise from a younger sister to her older sister to find a way to speed up the breast cancer research process in finding a cure to honor older sister, Susan G. Komen’s life. Twenty-five years later, Race for the Cure is the most successful fundraising event for breast cancer, and, as of 2007, has raised nearly $1 billion in research funds.
Cochnar formed the team with her women friends, called Barbie and the Boob Brigade, in honor of her mother, of which I was a part. We dressed in all pink (I wore a hot pink Marge Simpson wig) and wore t-shirts made by Cochnar with the names printed on the back of those we had loved and lost. When we walked along the San Francisco Bay, I marveled at the amount of people who had been touched by this disease.
