Bellevue Woman One of CNN's Heroes of the Year for Helping Women with Breast Cancer

Debbie Cantwell survived breast cancer. Like many survivors, whom she calls "sisters," Cantwell said she gained much more by way of community and inner strength than she felt she lost from dealing with chemotherapy, mastectomy and the fear of what could happen to her family if she was no longer there. Now, she shares that sense of community with others through a nonprofit she started in Bellevue, The Pink Daisy Project, which connects breast cancer patients under age 45 with assistance for everyday needs.

The Daisy Project is a small operation, run out of Cantwell’s living room, that gives assistance to women with breast cancer or, often, from their friends or family who see a need. Last year, the nonprofit had a budget of about $20,000, and by year's end, Cantwell said it could reach $70,000. So far, since launching in 2008, the nonprofit has provided assistance to about 180 women, she said.

Her organization has been recognized locally and nationally.  Pink Daisy will be the October Charity of the Month on News Talk 97.3 KIRO FM & 710 ESPN Seattle.

Cantwell recently was selected as one of CNN's Heroes of the Year, and she was in the running for the news channel's 2011 Hero of the Year. 

Cantwell hopes that her recognition by CNN will bring more recognition to the nonprofit, thereby allowing her to serve more women.

Cantwell, who was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago at age 41, said that she began The Pink Daisy Project because for her, having the support of her family and friends was crucial. At the same time, she realized that a lot of women don’t have that support system—they may be single parents struggling to continue working during treatment or be faced with the terrible choice of buying their chemotherapy drugs or feeding their families, or they may have family that lives too far away geographically to help them with mundane things like house cleaning that can become difficult to keep up with during treatment.

“I think of it as something you would do for a friend,” Cantwell said. And there are plenty of women who do have good social support; frequently, she says, people reject house cleaning because they have friends who already are helping with that. She said the most common request is for groceries, and in the fall, money for school clothes for their children. Cantwell said she heard from one woman who said her son was depressed, so Cantwell sent them some movie theater gift cards so they could just do something fun.

“People almost never ask for something that seems like a luxury,” she said.

“We don’t generally help with bills, but we can do gift cards for groceries,” for example, Cantwell said. There have been rare times when a person was facing eviction that a monetary grant has been made, she said, but with herself at the helm and a small cadre of volunteers who help with bookkeeping and administration tasks, she doesn’t have the womanpower to vet things like utility bills.

However, she does have the power to connect people around the country with people who can help them, often through donating in-kind services such as housecleaning. Recently, she spoke with Six Flags theme park in Maryland about a woman with stage four breast cancer and four children who just wanted to give her kids a great day at an amusement park. The park donated tickets for her to take her family with VIP passes to make it possible for the wheelchair-bound mom to attend also.

Cantwell said she is supportive of other organizations that seek to find a cure for breast cancer, but that she wanted to focus on what women who have breast cancer need right away.

“It’s like the idea of a food bank is so brilliant—they just need food,” she said. That’s sort of how she sees the niche of the Pink Daisy Project--helping people with their immediate needs.

“If you already have breast cancer, you can’t wait for a cure,” she said.

Though the focus of the Pink Daisy Project is immediate, functional assistance, Cantwell says her involvement in the community of breast cancer survivors has helped her to become an advocate in other areas as well. For example, about 6 percent of women who are treated with a particular mix of chemotherapy drugs lose their hair permanently. Cantwell is part of a group called http://www.taxotears.org/ that seeks to make medical providers more aware of this problem so they can consider alternative drug combinations where appropriate.

Though Cantwell is very busy between the rigors of her full-time job and raising her two children, she feels passionate about the Pink Daisy Project and hopes to continue expanding it.

“I want to be able to help more women and in more meaningful ways,” she says.

The Pink Daisy Project can be found on Facebook.