High Priority Remembers Cobb as Founder and an Inspiration

Members of High Priority of Orange County, a group of women dedicated to promoting breast cancer awareness and education, went to the Center Club on Monday to attend an annual meeting and pay tribute to their late founder, Wanda Cobb of North Tustin.

Carol Wilken, a past president and charter member of High Priority, stood before the crowd to tell them about Cobb, her good friend, who died of breast cancer in July at age 54.

“Some people come into our lives, make footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same,” Wilken said. “She was daughter, sister, friend, wife, mother, volunteer, grandmother, the list goes on . . .

“Wanda was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1981 with no lymph nodes involved. There was no further treatment. . . . Within three weeks, she went back to college.

“In 1985, the AMC Cancer Research Center in Denver asked her to start a chapter of High Priority in Orange County. Orange County had been flagged by researchers as having an unusually high breast cancer rate,” Wilken said.

“So Wanda was given the task of founding a breast cancer educational and outreach group [at a time] when you weren’t even [supposed] to say ‘breast’ in mixed company.”

The chapter flourished, with Cobb organizing membership drives, benefits and outreach programs such as Surgical Partners, where breast cancer patients who have undergone surgery help other patients face procedures.

“Orange County High Priority has been a model” used by the AMC center, Wilken said.

“We must continue to nurture the program Wanda Cobb founded.”

Dr. Robert Dillman, medical director of the Cancer Center at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, spoke to the group about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.

“Are we in an epidemic? Why is breast cancer such a problem?” Dillman asked the group.

The most common cause of death in women 100 years ago was childbirth, Dillman said. Half of women were dead by age 39 at the turn of the century.

Now women are living longer, “and we have made tremendous improvements in decreasing the No. 1 killer, cardiovascular disease,” he said. “The trade-off--increasing cancer among whites. . . . The No. 1 reason there is more breast cancer is that women are living longer than ever before.”

With regard to Orange County having a high rate of breast cancer, Dillman said: “You see a higher rate in metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, Seattle, Orange County, San Diego and the eastern United States because what they have in common is people of a high socioeconomic population who are very involved with their health care.

“It doesn’t mean there is something in the air here. When you see large cities with clusters of a lot of medical people, you see a lot of diagnoses of breast cancer being made.”

The key to surviving breast cancer is early detection through self-examination and mammography, Dillman said.

“Mammography may not be the most pleasant thing to go through, but the rewards are great. . . . We can see changes before you can even feel those changes.”

High Priority president Sandra Ellwanger joined the group when she lost her mother-in-law in 1992 to breast cancer at age 74. “She had a lump; a doctor told her it was nothing, and so she had a very late diagnosis,” she said.

Of Cobb, Ellwanger said: “Emotionally, her death has been very difficult for us. However, it has also rededicated us to fulfilling her dream of getting the message out about breast cancer.”