They Put High Value on Saving a Life

As cancer patient Maribel Sanchez stood to leave church early Sunday, she turned and waved to those who remained seated. They waved back, then broke into applause before Sanchez exited through a side door.

The parishioners at Iglesia Bautista Emanuel in Santa Ana were not saying goodbye. They were expressing their support for Sanchez in her three-year struggle against Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer that attacks the lymph nodes.

Sanchez smiled back at the more than 100 people, thanking them silently for helping her fight the disease.

When Sanchez, 21, was told one month ago that she needed $120,000 for a bone-marrow transplant, parishioners quickly mobilized to establish a fund.

But they have given more than their time. In addition to holding car washes in the church parking lot and soliciting funds nationwide, they have donated wedding rings, maxed out credit cards and dipped into savings accounts to raise close to $100,000.

“We don’t need it,” church member Aaron Morales said. “We’d rather have her [Maribel] than a chain around our neck or a ring around our finger.”

Twenty-two-year-old secretary Patricia Ortiz, like several other church members, donated her wedding band to the medical fund. Ortiz said her husband, Jesus, who also donated his wedding band, proposed the idea of giving up something so personal. Ortiz said that, at first, she hesitated.

“But I thought, ‘It’s more valuable for her [Maribel] to live,’ ” Ortiz said. “I can always replace that wedding band. But if she dies, I can never replace her.”

On her ring finger, Sanchez now sports a tiny diamond she values at $200, rather than her original wedding ring, which she valued at $3,800.

Church member Luis Saavedra said he has put an undeveloped parcel of land he owns in Hermosillo, Mexico, up for sale. Saavedra, 42, said he had meant to build a retirement home on the property, which he valued at about $15,000.

But, he said, “Property and money is just for pleasure. She [Maribel] needs to live.”

Even Saavedra’s 12-year-old son, Uriel, has contributed. Uriel, who attends intermediate school in Santa Ana, sold the $300 motorbike he received as a birthday present.

Uriel said that when Sanchez’s 2-year-old son asked about the bike, he told him, “I sold it because your mom needs the money. She needs help.”

The elder Saavedra said there is a strong drive to help Sanchez because “she gives everything she has for us. . . . She grew up in the church with us, spiritually.”

Church member David Quezada, who spearheaded the fund-raising drive, said Sanchez’s plight has forced the church to band together.

Pastor Pablo Arencibia agreed.

“Before, it was a sleepy church with no problems,” he said. “Now, the problem has arrived, and the people have awakened.”

A guest sermon was given Sunday, in Spanish, by Father Orosman Cruz, who was visiting from Cuba.

“One day, there’s a change in your life and you’re sick. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old,” Cruz told the audience. “But those who believe in Christ walk on solid ground.”

Cruz said he wrote the passage in Cuba, before he was aware of Sanchez’s cancer. But, he added, maybe the passage had been included through God’s guidance.

Quezada said that although the church had twice tried to pray for Maribel’s cancer to disappear, he believed members needed to take a more active role in helping her.

Fund organizer Morales estimates that about half the money raised has come from parishioners at Iglesia Emanuel, a Baptist church.

The rest of the money has come from donors across Orange County and the country, which has been made aware of Sanchez’s case through news stories in the English- and Spanish-language media.

Morales credits the fund-raiser and the media with getting Sanchez a bed at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte. A spokesman for the hospital, Paul E. Knopick, said media attention did not play a role in Sanchez’s admission.

Sanchez, who is unemployed, was able to attend church Sunday briefly because she has been released from the hospital for three weeks to recover from her first chemotherapy treatment.

In about two weeks, she will return for her second treatment. Each lasts about four days. After another three weeks’ rest, doctors will determine whether Sanchez is ready for the transplant, which would allow Sanchez’s body to produce healthy red and white blood cells and platelets.

Even with a bone-marrow transplant, Sanchez’s chances of survival are estimated at 60%.

Sanchez, dressed in a black, flower-print skirt and blue-denim tank top, was accompanied Sunday by her husband, Lupe, 26, who works at a rental car company, and her son, Jason, 2.

As reporters peppered Sanchez with questions outside the church, she quickly offered her thanks.

But, she was asked, could she ever repay the church members?

“If the same thing happened to somebody else,” she said, “I would do the same thing to help them.”