More Than Pink Walk returns this weekend at Fashion Island

The Susan G. Komen Orange County More Than Pink Walk is hitting Fashion Island in person this Sunday — a return to form for the fundraising event that was held virtually during the height of the pandemic.

“This is really a year in the making. We were planning to come back and we’re so grateful to our longtime partner, Pacific Life, for hosting the walk for its 31st year,” said Megan Klink, regional vice president for the nonprofit. “We have been planning with the support of a volunteer planning committee ... and making sure that we bring this back in a way that truly honors this community.”

Klink said the organization expects a turnout of about 4,000 people on Sunday. It’s hoped $550,000 will be raised to be put toward breast cancer screening, diagnostics and patient navigation services. As of Thursday almost $500,000 had been raised, according to Klink.

The walk will begin at 9 a.m. on Sunday with a “pathway of hope” parade to begin roughly 30 minutes before that.

“For such a long time, we were all impacted by the isolation and the separation of the pandemic, and we needed to do that to protect our health. And yet there was something missing,” Klink said. “In particular, for the [Orange County] breast health community, this has been something that is looked forward to every single year.

“The hugs, the tears, the love, the connection and understanding that you are not in it alone and that we are all here to come around one another … no matter where they’re at in their journey.”

Two-time breast cancer survivor and walk chair Angelique Fong agreed.

Fong, a Mission Viejo resident, said she’d participated in the walk a handful of times before her own diagnosis to support her mother, who is also a survivor. But the first time she’d taken the walk as a survivor was in 2013. She said she’d only just gotten a double mastectomy a few weeks prior.

“I had a little back sign on that people can write who they’re walking in honor of or in memory of. I wrote on mine: ‘Me, six weeks.’ When we were doing the opening ceremony and I was sitting on the stairs with all these other inspirational people that have battled the disease before me, a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘Has it really only been six weeks for you?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said, ‘Don’t worry; it gets better.’

“It brought tears to my eyes. I needed that. I didn’t know how much I needed that because I had such amazing friends, family and my husband, but to hear it from someone close to my age who had been through it already; I can’t put into words how much that meant to me.”

Tustin resident Phil Markert, director of liquor for Albertsons Cos., said he’s walking in the memory of his mother-in-law, Kathleen Ward, and friends that have also been affected by the disease.

“I’m doing this for my wife, my daughters, and then my new granddaughter, Chloé, and the future generation of women where they may live in a world without this terrible disease of breast cancer,” Markert said.

Markert, with help from the women’s network at Albertsons, Vons and Pavilion, has raised almost $80,000 for this year’s campaign. He said he wanted to leverage what influence he had to help make an impact. He started fundraising for the effort on LinkedIn in June.

He said he heard primarily from women he’d never met before, oftentimes those in executive positions who thanked him for using his own standing to bring awareness to the cancer.

The network’s leadership team will be attending alongside Markert, according to Courtney Carranza, director of their communications and public affairs.

Fong said cancer treatment can at times be a very lonely experience but that there is strength in numbers.

“The pandemic was not easy on anybody and especially on those who were diagnosed with or had to go through treatment during it,” said Fong. “To just be able to all get together again safely and walk together, it’s going to do all our hearts a lot of good.”

To register for the event visit komen.org/orangecountywalk.

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