Cancer isn’t fought alone

SNOHOMISH – A sense of community stems from people’s hearts. It grows with their actions. And it can soothe one’s soul when life gets rough.

Michael O’Leary / The Herald Tami Nelson (far left) and Lori Golitzin (center) helped their friend Tanya McNeil (right) make a pinata for a fundraising event.

Tanya McNeill, 38, knows about that sense of community firsthand.

She lives in a housing development north of Snohomish where neighbors bring cookies and pies to newcomers, chat over coffee in their homes and eat dinner and watch movies together.

“It was meant to be, that I moved here. This was the place where I needed to be taken care of,” said McNeill, the mother of two children.

McNeill was diagnosed with breast cancer in December. She had two tumors removed in February, and she is now a few weeks into chemotherapy. She cut her hair about a week ago before losing it all due to side effects of the treatments.

People stare at her cap at the grocery store, she said. “The attention you get is difficult.”

But her family, friends and neighbors make her battle easier, McNeill said.

McNeil’s friends planted a lace-leaf maple in her yard and decorated it with ribbons.

Her husband, John, a paramedic and firefighter, and his co-workers at the Bellevue Fire Department recently shaved their heads to show support for McNeill and another woman fighting breast cancer.

Her neighbors and friends have formed a support group called Team Tanya. The group has raised more than $11,000 through contributions, garage sales, races and poker and dinner events for the national Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

The team has about 50 people, and most are McNeill’s neighbors, including Tami Nelson, 40; Faith Stayner, 33; Lori Golitzin, 38; and Tina Davis, 37. The team’s achievements are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s happening in their neighborhood, they say. Last year, the neighborhood raised about $8,000 at a garage sale for victims of Hurricane Katrina, they said.

Their neighborhood isn’t gated and doesn’t have a fancy name. It looks like any other residential area with new houses and lawns.

But “baby steps” have made the neighborhood close, said Stayner, who lives next door to McNeill. Those steps can be as small as greeting neighbors and taking out each other’s garbage during vacations.

It all helps to build a sense of community, a diminishing concept in today’s busy society, the five neighbors said.

“You have to work at it,” Tami Nelson said.

Every Thursday, McNeill carries a suitcase to a Seattle hospital, even though she’s only going for a few hours of chemotherapy. The suitcase is full of goodies from her neighbors, including magazines, slippers and candy.

When she returns home, McNeill always finds something. Recently, two neighbors filled an empty planter with fresh soil and plants while she was gone. On another day, she found flowers at her doorstep.

“I’m incredibly touched,” McNeill said.

Her neighborhood friends also have taken turns fixing a meal once a week for McNeill’s family. The meals warm her body. That sense of community soothes her soul, she said.

Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com.