That's when she and a friend decided to found a support group for minority women called Project Hope. Because of her breast cancer awareness efforts in the minority community, Cook has been selected as the Honorary Survivor Chair for the 12th Annual Komen Quad Cities Race for the Cure , to be held Saturday, June 9, in the John Deere Commons area of downtown Moline. The distinction quite aptly reflects her life's ultimate accomplishment, she says. It's a victory for me. Many of the ladies with breast cancer are still very hush-hush about it.
Cancer still has a stigma.
We have to break that barrier. In 1996, she and an African-American friend who had been diagnosed with leukemia formed a support group called Project Hope for minority women with cancer. To find these silent sufferers, they went to churches and sought others who were going through the same ordeal. Ironically, they all had breast cancer. For whatever reason, they're not aware of them.