There was no shortage of heart-warming stories to be found among the 25,000 runners at the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco on Sunday, but Kelley Cohen's and Joe DiNatale's was one of the least likely.
When Cohen was a freshman at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles she was diagnosed with two fast-growing forms of leukemia and a bone marrow transplant was her only hope for survival. DiNatale, an Air Force fighter pilot with two young daughters, turned out to be a perfect match.
His wife, Julie, was the one who answered the life-changing phone call in 2006, and she didn't even know he had volunteered to be a donor.
"I said they could count on him to do it," she said. "We knew it was for someone else's child and I had no doubt he would do it."
Runners have raised more than $128 million for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society since the marathon, the largest race of its kind in the world, began in 2004. Thousands of supporters cheered the runners as they made their way along the waterfront from Union Square to the Great Highway with signs that ranged from sincere -
"Thank you from a lymphoma survivor" - to silly - "If P. Diddy can finish a marathon, so can you."
The DiNatales came from Pennsylvania to watch Joe, 39, run a half-marathon with Cohen, a 24-year-old elementary school teacher living in Pacific Heights. Completing the 13.1-mile trek was tough, but Cohen said she just kept reminding herself that "cancer sucks more."
"Without the research, I wouldn't be here; without my donor, I wouldn't be here," she said.
Many participants ran for family members and loved ones. Matt Herring, a doctoral student at UC Davis, wore a blood- and sweat-soaked shirt that read "For my sister" on the front and "She beat cancer" on the back.
"Getting cancer when you're in your 20s, that's no fun," said Herring, who planned to give the necklace all runners received to his sister for Christmas. "I don't care about my time, I love seeing people finish and they love helping me finish."
But others ran even if they didn't have a personal connection to the disease. Tracie Bannick of Denver stepped gingerly with a walking boot on her left foot after finishing her half-marathon. Like DiNatale and Cohen, she was one of about 3,500 people running to raise money with the society's Team in Training, despite having a stress fracture.
"I like running for a cause instead of running just for me," she said.
Leora Silva, 69, stood out for her pink hair, dyed for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. She works as a cashier at a Safeway in San Jose and said people come every year to see her hair when the grocery store collects donations to help fight breast cancer.
"Everyone who comes through the line loves it," said Silva, who noted that this was the sixth half-marathon she's run to raise money for cancer research. "They've been very generous, I get a lot of $5 bills."
For Dorothy Kiser and her family, Sunday was sad. They drove from their homes in Texas and wore shirts that read "In Memory of Noah" with a picture of a smiling blond boy.
Noah is Kiser's 12-year-old son who died in March after losing his battle with leukemia.
"He was a little ray of sunshine for everyone," said his aunt, Pam Reding, whose daughters raised $6,500 for charity.
Kiser isn't supposed to walk for more than five minutes at a time because of health problems, but she completed the half-marathon for her son, who dreamed of working for NASA.
"He would have wanted me to be here," Kiser said. "He was never a quitter."
Article Provided by SFgate.com
