Looking for a Cure, One Jar at a Time

At the rear of West L.A.’s Whole Foods Market, next to carefully calculated stacks of bright-skinned produce and in front of the spinach balls and vegetable tamales, Peggy Curry sets up a crock pot containing pasta and her special marinara.

“Kids love it,” she tells a woman in shades and a baseball cap screwed on backward. The woman takes a bite, then offers a taste to the toddler in her shopping cart. Curry knows that if she can get shoppers to try a taste, she has about an 80% chance of making a sale.

“It’s a good way to get them to eat vegetables,” she tells the woman. “You can put it on zucchini.”

This is the true test. The child swallows and, like a baby bird, opens her mouth for more. The woman takes a jar.

And so it goes--one jar at a time, from $2.89 to $3.69 a pop. With each sale, Curry moves a small step closer to her goal: helping researchers find a cure for breast cancer.

All profits from Evy’s Garden Organic Marinara go to breast cancer research, education for prevention and patient support. Two or three times a week, Curry and Manhattan Beach neighbor Ashley George drive throughout Southern California to give out free samples at stores that sell her marinara.

Their small steps add up. At a June fund-raiser to introduce Evy’s Garden, Curry raised $131,000 for the Wellness Community-South Bay Cities and the Ensign and Lewis Foundation for Breast Cancer Research. Since then, marinara sales have generated $14,000 in profits that she will donate.

The sauce, produced at cost by Ventre Packing Co., manufacturer of Enrico’s food products, is now sold at natural food stores nationwide. It is the first time an Enrico’s product has been created specifically to benefit a cause, says Vice President Steven Weinstein.

“When she and Tim [Curry’s husband] first came to us, our immediate response was, ‘Why another spaghetti sauce?’ ” Weinstein says. “There already were so many out there, but then they explained why they were doing this, and we were overwhelmed.”

*

For Curry, Evy’s Garden has reinforced her belief that one person can make a huge difference in the world.

“I’ve learned that when you believe something so strong in your heart, you can do it, no matter what it is, no matter how difficult it might seem, no matter how scared you are,” she says. “If the purpose is clear and your intentions are pure, it will happen.”

In 15 minutes at Whole Foods, nine jars have been sold.

“I love this. I was groomed for this job, this purpose,” says Curry, dressed in T-shirt, blue jeans and diamond earrings. “There’s a plan out there for me to reach a lot of people.”

The diamonds belonged to her mother, Evy Rosenbloom, who died of breast cancer. Curry often wears something of her mom’s as a reminder of Rosenbloom’s life and 11-year struggle with cancer.

Rosenbloom was a partner in Lily’s of Beverly Hills, a sportswear manufacturer. She and Dr. Harold Rosenbloom, a podiatrist, were married 51 years and had three children. They met as teenagers in a Philadelphia candy store, and they said goodbye at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 1994. She was 70 years old.

During her final months, she would visit Curry and they would sit quietly, holding hands, brushing each other’s hair. Sometimes they read about the afterlife to each other from the book “Many Lives, Many Masters” (S&S; Trade), by Brian L. Weiss. They were halfway through when Rosenbloom died.

“We would just talk about what she was going through. She taught me not to be afraid of death,” Curry says. “She taught me about forgiveness.”

So when her mother died, Curry was not bitter at what cancer had claimed. Instead, she was determined to continue the fight--from a place of love. The question was how.

*

In Curry’s heart, she believes a cure for breast cancer will be found within 10 years. But in her kitchen, a candle almost always burns.

On this day, the candle is burning for a friend who is beginning another round of cancer treatment. This, Curry says, is the painful part of her work: meeting people who are battling cancer--hearing their stories of courage and determination; loving them; and, sometimes losing them.

She quotes a tape called “Your Life Begins Now,” by Wayne Dyer: “The world was made for joy and woe. This is rightly so.”

It’s the yin and the yang, she says, the unbelievable joy, the unthinkable tragedy of life. It is four healthy daughters. And it is a list of factors describing increased vulnerability to breast cancer, and the check marks Curry can place next to almost all of them.

“There’s a test I can take that would show if I have the gene or not. I’m choosing not to because I believe when you focus on the negative, you attract the negative,” Curry says. “When I do this work, I try to come from a place of love, not fear.”

It is from that place that the marinara began. The first time she made it was in 1980, while teaching special education students at Culver City Middle School. As a reward, she allowed them to make pizza on Fridays.

“The sauce just sort of evolved from there. I added and changed. I love to cook, and when I cook I line up all my cookbooks. And I take a little and a little and a little, so that’s what happened.”

In June, Curry spearheaded a fund-raiser to introduce Evy’s Garden. She envisioned a block party, but what evolved was “An Evening in the Garden” at the South Coast Botanic Garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Her initial goal was to raise $30,000, and during the early planning stages, Tim, chief financial officer for a clothing manufacturer, offered to give her the money to spare her the months of work, long hours and, possibly, disappointment.

“I told him it wasn’t about the money,” she recalls. “It was about the people we were going to touch and the lessons we were going to learn.”

Tim stood before the audience at the fund-raiser and expressed how fortunate it was that his wife refused his offer. The event attracted 1,450 people, with others on a waiting list, and 250 volunteers, some coming from as far away as Idaho.

*

Trying to find a cure for cancer requires more than test tubes and microscopes. Sometimes it takes a former schoolteacher, a crock pot and a marinara sweetened with just a hint of honey.

At the bottom of each Evy’s Garden label are the words, “All profits are donated with love to breast cancer research and patient support.” Curry hopes that when a cure is found, she and Evy’s Garden can move forward.

“Maybe then,” she says, “I can help clean up the environment or feed the hungry.”

One jar at a time.