When Mindy Sopher interviewed for the position of Director of Greek Life for the University in 1999, she was asked a question she’ll never forget.

“What is the one thing that could happen to you that would send you running away from this job?” Tim Luckadoo, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, asked Sopher.

“If my body could not keep up with the kind of work, would be the only way I could think of,” Sopher said.

Eight months later, Sopher was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Sopher was just one of 183,000 women who develop breast cancer each year, according to the American Cancer Society, despite the efforts of scientists at N.C. State and throughout the world looking to find a cure for the disease.

October is national breast cancer awareness month, and with thousands of students and faculty affected by the disease, groups on campus are doing their part in the fight against breast cancer.

Sopher, now an academic adviser for the University, stepped down from the Greek Life position because of the toll it took on her body.

After having her lymph nodes removed, the cancer metastasized in 2001, showing up in her neck, and treatment for her reoccurrence lasted eight months.

Then a few months ago, Sopher had her second reoccurrence of cancer. She fought the disease this time using a chemotherapy pill.

“During chemotherapy, people usually lose weight — not me,” Sopher said. “My hair thinned out and I lost my eyebrows.”

But despite the dozens of therapies undergone and drugs taken to combat the disease, Sopher has gone through the last seven years without a chip on her shoulder.

“I don’t go through life in fear. I count it as joy that I’m still alive,” she said. “I have been given a gift and if God wanted to take me, he would have done so a long time ago.”

Sopher said her gift is relating to people and sharing her story to encourage others.

Women’s basketball coach Kay Yow has the same gift, after surviving a reoccurrence of breast cancer two years ago.

According to Sopher, the goal is to go five years without a reoccurrence which usually means that the cancer should not appear again. But Yow was cancer-free for 17 years before the cancer reared its head again.

Yow went to an alternative program as treatment for breast cancer, during the 2004-2005 basketball season, causing her to miss two of her team’s games. The alternative program was used to help treat the disease and teach the patients how to manage it.

“I felt a sense of urgency and I really learned a lot,” Yow said.Like most other cancer survivors, Yow goes through every day managing as best she can.

“I just take it day-by-day now,” she said. “To me, it’s about controlling the disease, just like someone with diabetes would. Hopefully the drugs and other treatment will work and keep it from reappearing.”

But students and faculty at State are doing research on campus to discover more about breast cancer.

Rebecca Wolf, a sophomore in animal science, worked as a lab assistant with Jill Barnes and breast cancer survivor, Patty Spears, at the College of Veterinary Medicine to study the way stress proteins are expressed in breast cancer cells.

Although the tests were done at the vet school, the scientists used human breast cancer cells to see how heat shock proteins act as co-activators in the estrogen response system.

“It was really interesting, and it was cool just to help them out and do my part,” Wolf said.

Spears was diagnosed with the disease in 1999, and because her normal line of work of bacterial pathogenesis, she had to stay out of the lab during her chemotherapy.

“When you go through chemo, you’re prone to infections that normal people don’t get,” Spears said. “So I stayed out of the lab.”

Spears said she experienced nearly every symptom that is connected to breast cancer, so her doctors acted on treatment quickly. Within a week of the diagnosis, she was undergoing chemo to shrink the lump in her breast. Luckily for Spears, she didn’t have to have surgery until it was very small and has had no reoccurrence since.

“I like to say I had the right primary care physician,” Spears said. “He wouldn’t step back on the dosages.”

As a scientist, Spears said she is able to use her experience with the disease to help research attempts to finding a cure. “I do grant reviews for the Department of Defense’s breast cancer program,” Spears, who also works with a cancer program at Duke, said. “I can look at things as a scientist, like how is this going to help? What should we put our dollars toward?”

Yow and the women’s basketball team are also joining students and faculty to do their part this season to help the fight.

As part of their ‘Save Lids to Save Lives,’ the women’s basketball team and the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority are partnering up with Yoplait to raise awareness and funding on campus for breast cancer.

But one of the best things students can do for breast cancer patients, according to Sopher, is just to show people that others care.

“Talk to breast cancer survivors or patients, because they want to talk,” Sopher said. “My roommate cut his hair off when I lost mine, and someone else sent me flowers every week. Anything you can do to make the person look forward to something is great.”