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Feature Stories

Kathi Helmrath

by Michael Corey

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While her husband was away on business, Kathi Helmrath was flipping through the channels, seeking company for the evening. She stumbled upon the news show, 48 Hours, which was highlighting the importance of self-breast exams in combating cancer. She paused, interrupted by a realization. "Oh, my goodness," she said to herself. "You haven't done that in a while."

Minutes later, she had found a lump in her breast.

"Within 48 hours I was having my surgery and reconstruction," Helmrath recalls. "But that's my personality, once I knew what it was, it was just, 'Let's do it now.' I'm much better off taking care of things immediately." The fight against her lump was not nearly as immediate. But the fight was "textbook" as Helmrath remembers, for she was fortunate to respond as well as can be expected to chemotherapy, and fortunate in that her cancer never returned. Her personal battle having been won, Helmrath set out to wage a war against an interminable foe.
   
"When I was a little girl and I was like 8 or 9, in those days our families just had little houses with one bathroom," Helmrath recalls. "And if kids were over at the cousin's house and you'd be playing, and someone had to run to the bathroom, the little kids would just run into the bathroom because there was only one. "I did this once and my aunt was taking a bath, and she had had a mastectomy. Back in those days, it was pretty gross what they did to your body. And so for an eight-year old little girl, that was pretty ugly. It scared me to death. So when I got home that night I asked my mom what happened to Aunt Edna, and for the rest of my mom's life it was always, 'Shush we don't talk about that, Aunt Edna's had breast cancer.'"

Her mother's stance of silence was accompanied by one more declaration--that regardless of what the doctors said, anyone diagnosed with breast cancer would be dead within five years. "I look at Mom in heaven and say, 'Mom, you weren't wrong on many things but you were wrong on this one.' Someone's going to be scared if they're diagnosed--and that's rightfully so. But I don't want any woman being diagnosed to feel like it's the end of the world." It is this quest to stymie silence and fear that has driven Helmrath to be one of Komen Columbus' most valued and most effective volunteers. She has served in every conceivable capacity since the second Columbus Race in the 1993, ranging from a volunteer coordinator to Race chairwoman to the Komen Columbus president from 1999-2000.

Indeed, a great deal has changed in that span of time. "In the beginning we only had one committee,  so we met and  primarily focused on putting on the Race," Helmrath says. "And within our little group—some did development, some did something else—but it was not this separated entity that it is today. It grew into that under my presidency. But in the beginning we really only met to plan the race." Those meetings used to take place in a volunteer's living room. Now, 13 years and millions of dollars later, Komen Columbus operates out of its own office. The Race itself has increased in size to a field of more than 30,000 runners, making it one of the largest in the country.

But the statistics are unimportant. It's the knowledge--and the noise--that emanates from the Race that matters to Helmrath. "One of my personal goals was that nobody when being told they had that diagnosis would ever go, 'Shush, you only have five years.' I want anybody who has that diagnosis to say, 'Okay, this is what I’ve got. Let's move on and not be afraid of it or be afraid to talk about it.'" And the past few years, Helmrath has been in charge of the boisterous celebration that takes place at the conclusion of each Race for the Cure, the awards ceremony.

There are tears, of course, in mourning those unable to cross the finish line. But there is hope, and recognition of the progress made--that progress being increased research, increased knowledge and increased confidence to the ever wider swath of Central Ohioans exposed to the information and the hope Komen Columbus provides. No one has been more responsible for this advancement than Helmrath. And for her tireless efforts, Helmrath received an award of her own in 2006--the national Kellogg Volunteer Award.  Helmrath says, "It was a very nice surprise. It is treasured."

 Such treasures as Helmrath, and the treasures she has helped bring to Central Ohioans, are far more rare. And in the fight against breast cancer, those treasures make all the difference.