Leukemia Stalks Police

It was bad enough when Judi Harmon got leukemia. Then Guy Reneau got sick with it too. A few months later, David Richards was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

It all happened within three years to these Anaheim police officers, members of a tight and collegial group who regard each other as family. It made them wonder whether it was something more than an unfortunate coincidence.

“It was very odd to think about how two people who work in the same department both get diagnosed--and then Dave,” said Reneau, 42, a homicide detective who was diagnosed with the disease in July. Last year, two children of other police officers also were diagnosed with cancer. “People are all scratching their heads,” Reneau said.

Anaheim police officers are doing the only thing they say they can: They are trying to find bone marrow donors to help their colleagues and their colleagues’ children.

Officer Raul Quezada’s 5-year-old daughter Kirstie was diagnosed in December 1998 with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the same type as Harmon’s. And Kerry Condon’s 3-year-old son Kiley was diagnosed about a year ago with neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system.

Aided by the Los Angeles Police Department and police agencies in Orange County and Hawaii, where another officer suffers from leukemia, Anaheim police officers are arranging at least 10 bone marrow drives in May and June.

On May 23, the Orange Police Department is sponsoring a drive to help one of its lieutenants, John Whiteley, 50, who has had two rounds of chemotherapy for his leukemia and now awaits a bone marrow transplant. On June 2, the Mall of Orange will host a drive.

Doctors say bone marrow transplants are the best chance for these people to survive, since healthy bone marrow cells can help restore faulty immune systems. But finding a compatible donor is difficult. Of the more than 3 million registered in the National Marrow Donor Program, none are a match for the officers or the children.

So they’ve turned to donor drives.

“Our business is protecting lives,” Anaheim Police Chief Roger Baker said. “If we can get momentum going, [we can] get people to realize . . . that there are thousands looking for bone marrow matches.”

Their colleagues’ illnesses have struck a chord with most officers, who already work each day with the knowledge that a gunshot or car crash might make it their last. That their own bodies might fail them was not something they considered.

It also has raised suspicions that there is a link between the job and the illnesses, particularly since the victims all are relatively young.

But Hoda Anton-Culver, chief of epidemiology at UC Irvine’s College of Medicine and director of its cancer surveillance program, said there is a “good likelihood” that the Anaheim officers’ cases are coincidental.

Still, the three Anaheim officers have filed workers’ compensation claims under recent state legislation that allows police and firefighters to argue that their cancer is caused by their work environment.

The city has denied their claims. Officials say they investigated whether the officers’ work might have caused the cancers but found no evidence.

It was last summer when Reneau first got the sniffles, a fever and headaches and had trouble breathing. He thought it was flu and expected a simple explanation and maybe medicine from his doctors.

Instead they told him that chronic myelogenous leukemia had made his white cells divide uncontrollably. His blood was “out of whack,” he said, with the number of white blood cells overrunning his system and making him sick.

Hearing the news was “like getting run over by a freight train or hit with a hammer,” Reneau said. “You’re stunned.”

His life quickly was disarranged. He stopped working, began receiving blood transfusions and found himself nauseated from chemotherapy treatments.

Reneau’s experience and those of Harmon, Richards and the children have galvanized Anaheim police department employees. Their cases also have attracted the attention of other police departments.

Los Angeles police became involved in organizing all the Southland drives after LAPD Deputy Chief David Gascon visited Hawaii and learned about Honolulu Police Capt. Alvin Nishimura’s bout with a type of leukemia. LAPD had plenty of experience organizing bone marrow drives, because several of its officers and their relatives had been diagnosed with leukemia.

Gascon pledged his department’s help with the drive to aid Nishimura. In contacting the American Red Cross to help the Honolulu officer, LAPD officials learned about the Anaheim and Orange officers.

It hasn’t been easy recruiting donors. Typically, people resist signing up at bone marrow registries, because donors often are asked to pay for their blood tests and to endure what can be a painful process to donate marrow.

Police are trying to raise money to make it easier for prospective donors.

Police say they are frustrated. They know there is a cure for their colleagues, but it’s just out of reach. Nishimura, the Honolulu captain, had even found matches, but those donors backed out. He still is waiting for a match with a willing donor.

All they can do is wait.

Richards, 39 and the father of two children, took time off for chemotherapy, then switched to a light-duty desk job. Now he is in remission and back at patrol work. Identifying a compatible donor now could still help in case his condition changes.

Harmon’s diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia in 1997 changed the detective’s outlook. “A good day is an excellent day, but even a bad day is OK, because you’re alive,” said Harmon, 39.

But even the new appreciation for life can’t compensate for the work Harmon has missed during the last two years.

She said she used to come home satisfied that she had done her best each day. “People don’t understand how much fun and satisfaction I got helping people in a crisis,” she said. “I miss that.”

For information on how to help, contact the American Red Cross at (213) 739-5595.

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Transplant Procedure

A common treatment for leukemia patients, a bone marrow transplant involves extracting stem cells from a healthy donor and infusing them into the recipient through a large vien in the chest. How marrow is extracted:

1. Diamond-tipped needle inserted into illiac bone in pelvic area

2. Needle inserted into soft bone, marrow extracted

3. Needle reinserted in same hole up to 150 times, a tablespoon of marrow extracted per insertion

Source: Michael Lill, MD, director of bone marrow transplant program, and Patricia Van Strien, RN, OCN, bone marrow transplant coordinator; Cedars-Sinai-Medical Center, Los Angeles

Graphics reporting and graphic by RAOUL RANOA / Los Angeles Times