'Warriors' fight hard for Lisa

Her son proudly wears a pink baseball cap to school, while dozens of friends and relatives — including men who resemble burly linebackers — wear white T-shirts emblazoned with a giant pink "L."

The L stands for Lisa Hoj and "Lisa's Warriors," as her friends call themselves, friends who are determined to help the 35-year-old Holladay woman beat breast cancer.

This Saturday, you'll find the group at Salt Lake City's Sugarhouse Park, running and walking in the annual Walk for Hope, a 5K race to benefit breast cancer research.

Last year, just a few weeks after Lisa was diagnosed with stage four incurable cancer, Lisa's Warriors quickly put together a pile of pink T-shirts to fit everyone from XXS infants to XXL grandfathers, then surprised Lisa by showing up 80 strong to push her around the park in a wheelchair.

This year, Lisa will walk the course on her own, grateful to have survived her first year battling the disease. "I can't lose hope — I'm feeling good right now," she says, unraveling her purple silk head scarf to show off the fuzzy hair growth that's coming back after chemotherapy.

"There's no chance I can be cured, but I'm hoping to manage the cancer like a chronic illness. I want to live and thrive with it. As you can see, I have a terrific support group to see me through."

Happy to share her story, Lisa joined me and four of her "warriors" for a Free Lunch of take-out lasagna, salad and bread sticks at her friend Melissa Rideout's Holladay home.

A mother of three children age 3 to 9, "I have a lot of reasons to keep fighting," she says. "I have a hat with a ribbon on it for each year that I've made it. Right now, there's only one ribbon. But I want to fill that hat up."

Lisa was 30 when she first found a small lump in her right breast and visited two doctors to have it checked out. Both told her that there was nothing to fear — it was simply fibrocystic breast tissue. There was no need for a mammogram. She was too young, they said, to worry about breast cancer.