Know Your Neighbor: Hope Wolfe, Lustgarten Foundation Volunteer, Armonk

When Hope Wolfe and her family learned that her father had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer it turned their lives upside down.

There had been some stomach discomfort and loss of appetite, but the south Florida entrepreneur and real estate developer was an otherwise active, successful and healthy 68-year-old.

“Most people have very strong feelings for their father but my father was amazing. We were exceptionally close,” Wolfe said. “He was a great, larger than life, charismatic guy, just a sweetheart of a guy, fun-loving and just full of life and just fun to be around.

In 2007, it would turn out that he would be one of the roughly 50,000 Americans each year who are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died in 2009.

“It was a very, very rough loss for us,” said Wolfe, whose children, now a college freshman and a high school junior, had difficulty comprehending the loss at the time. “Just heartbreaking and hard to imagine and just really difficult to feel like we couldn’t fight.”

For a family that was never affected by cancer to any extent, the diagnosis was a shock. More unsettling is the grim reality that so many with pancreatic cancer have had little chance to wage a successful battle against the disease.

But through the efforts of Wolfe, her husband Gavin, son Garrett and daughter Devon and many other dedicated volunteers they are working to make sure significant progress is being forged.

Wolfe and her family have been involved in the spring walkathons at Rye Playland. Then two years ago, they partnered with several other families from northern Westchester and Fairfield County, Conn. who have also been touched by pancreatic cancer to organize the Race 4 A Cure fundraiser at Grand Prix New York, a night of go-kart racing, bowling, video games, food and fun at the Mount Kisco entertainment complex.

The inaugural event in 2015 and last winter’s renewal attracted about 450 and 500 guests, respectively, and raised more than $300,000 for the Lustgarten Foundation, the largest private foundation dedicated to funding pancreatic cancer research. All of the proceeds raised by volunteers go directly toward research, which appealed to Wolfe.

“I just felt, one, I wanted to honor my dad’s memory,” said Wolfe, a 10-year Armonk resident who grew up in Miami and worked on Wall Street after graduating from school in California. “Just the thought this could hit somebody else I really care about, somebody in my family, had impact. I’m not just sitting back and not doing anything. I really wanted to attempt to make a difference because you never know when you’re on the breaking point (for a cure). I don’t know. I continue to have hope that we’re getting close to something.”

Since its inception in 1998, the Lustgarten Foundation has raised about $125 million for research, said Kerri Kaplan, the executive director of the Long Island-based organization. In that time, researchers have been making progress toward earlier detection, which would give patients better treatment options and improved survival rates.

Kaplan said that symptoms – such as fatigue, diminished appetite, stomach discomfort – are common aches and pains that most people don’t associate with a life-threatening illness. The pancreas is also in a difficult to reach area behind the stomach, she said.

Research is progressing to detect pre-cancer cysts on the pancreas and to determine whether they pose a problem as well as developing an accurate blood test.

That’s why the efforts by Wolfe and her family and others to raise money for research are so crucial.

“We are so grateful to people like Hope and her husband Gavin and her children,” Kaplan said. “The foundation relies on volunteers. They are the backbone of this foundation. She came up with this idea to do this event, put together a whole community of all her friends and colleagues in the area and contacted some other people we know in the area. She’s amazing, her whole family’s amazing.”

Being touched by pancreatic cancer has inspired Wolfe and her family to raise money for research, but her son, Garrett, a freshman at Duke, is strongly considering a career in scientific research.

Through all the volunteers’ efforts, Wolfe is optimistic of a research breakthrough.

“You can’t just do nothing,” she said. “If everybody does that really nothing’s going to happen.”

The third annual Race 4 A Cure is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 10 at Grand Prix New York. For more information about the event, the Lustgarten Foundation and pancreatic cancer, visit www.lustgarten.org.