October is often viewed as a scary month as Halloween decorations line store shelves and pop up in neighbors’ yards. For some, October is a reminder of a much scarier time, a time when they remember the moment they received some of the worst news of their life, a diagnosis of breast cancer. What is even scarier, is the prospect of facing that journey alone. However, one Longmont nonprofit refuses to let people experience that fear for long.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Mixed among the fall colors are ribbons of pink to bring awareness to a disease that impacts around 240,000 people each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Longmont, Roberta’s Legacy walks the journey with locals who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. The nonprofit was established in 2017 after Roberta Lozinski died from breast cancer. Lozinski was a generous woman who devoted her time to helping others, said her daughter and Executive Director Amy Willard.
Lozinski understood firsthand how lonely the journey of breast cancer could be and she lent her empathy and compassion to others to ease their burdens while facing her own head-on, according to Willard. She created a legacy the nonprofit tries to embody, even today.
Morgan Metcalf, a Longmont resident, faces a terminal diagnosis of breast cancer. She received her initial diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic which forced her to attend appointments and treatments alone. She said she wasn’t even aware that she could bring someone to support her until she met Willard, nearly three years ago.
Metcalf said she was a private person before meeting the Roberta’s Legacy team, she never asked for help and tried to make it all work on her own. The cancer treatments and financial impacts grew to be too much which forced her to seek help.
It took a long time to gain Metcalf’s trust, but the nonprofit team met her and her family where they were and have been along every step of Metcalf’s journey since, she said.
“Amy always knows when I am sad and knows the perfect time to send a message. They have done an amazing job of creating all these little families. Wherever they go they are with those families (referring to Roberta’s Legacy clients),” Metcalf said.
“The purpose is for people to feel supported, whether that be emotionally or financially … that they are not alone and that there is always going to be someone there who is going to support them,” Willard said. “We are here with them for the journey … we would really rather help a small group of people really, really well than to help a large group of people with just a little bit at a time.”
For Willard, helping these people through their breast cancer journey is a way to remember her mother.
“She wouldn’t love that her name is on it, she was more of a silent giver and she didn’t need the recognition,” Willard said. “But it brings a realness to it … in everything we do we try to recreate her DNA, who she was. This (work) was near and dear to heart.”
Even at the end of Lozinski’s life, she made an effort to sit with women who shared her diagnosis and continued to make afghans for them, Willard remembered. These are the characteristics that Willard has woven into the fabric of the nonprofit organization.
People diagnosed with breast cancer make lifelong friends when they connect with Roberta’s Legacy, Metcalf said. They also find a group of people who show empathy and compassion to the struggles these patients face.
Volunteers at Roberta’s Legacy help by thinking of the small things beyond the diagnosis that allow clients to make memories instead of focusing only on their diagnosis. Whether those moments are making cookies or visiting a haunted house or other family-centered activities.
When Roberta’s Legacy began in 2017, it served only two clients. It has grown to now serve around 40 clients. The organization works to aide families with rent/mortgage assistance, car repairs, utilities, groceries, shuttling them to appointments and being a support system in those appointments and so much more.
Anyone with a breast cancer diagnosis is allowed to apply for assistance with the nonprofit. The only requirement to receive support is to verify that the person is receiving treatment for the disease twice a year. Beyond that Roberta’s Legacy views clients as extended members of their own family and helps in any way possible.
“This is her (Lozinski’s) legacy and her name is on it. In everything we do we want it to be who she was, what she did, how she would treat people if she was here,” Willard said. “I really think she would be proud of what that is because I feel like in everything that we do, it really is about who she was.”
