When Carol Koris completed her first three day, 60-mile breast cancer walk, she likened it to childbirth, saying, “It’s harder than you imagined, you’re not sure you ever want to do it again, and the experience is hard to describe.” Three years ago Koris, honors program coordinator at the North Miami Campus, found herself waiting to learn if calcifications in her own breast were malignant. Friends noted that 50 percent of calcifications are benign. Praying she would not be one of the 50 percent malignant, she realized, “If one out of two women get breast cancer with what I have, I’m wishing this on someone else. How selfish is that?”
In that instant, she vowed, if spared, she would walk “for that other woman.” No one in her family has ever been touched by the cancer. Soliciting sponsors for her walk, she came to understand how truly lucky she is, as email upon email from donors replied, “I am that other woman.”
In October 2007, Koris began her second 3-Day at Sand Key Park in Clearwater, Fla. With her daughter, Michele, at her side, Koris and the 1,960 other walkers were united in one goal: to stop the loss of lives to breast cancer. With new awareness, the mother of five realizes, “The walk is more like life itself. It is full of sadness and laughter, adversity and kindness, the urge to stop and the will to go on.” Each day, she now wears a breast cancer pink ribbon to never forget: “Life is fragile.”