Friend’s Spirit Will Propel Newport Paddleboarders in Catalina Race

Keith Munemitsu has added incentive to finish today’s 32-mile Catalina Classic paddleboard race: He’s paddling in honor of a friend who died this month of a rare form of cancer.

Munemitsu and fellow Newport Beach residents Mark Schulein, Jack Hamilton and Scott Lincoln will be among 80 paddleboarders tackling the grueling course from Santa Catalina Island to the Manhattan Beach Pier in tribute to Suzanne Leider, a former Newport resident who died at age 35 on Aug. 8 after a decade-long battle against synovial sarcoma.

“You go through this world and you meet people who will always be there for you,” Munemitsu said. “She was one of my very best friends. Her strength inspired me to live.”

When Leider was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma in 1992, she set out to educate herself on how to live with the illness. But because sarcomas account for fewer than 1% of new cancer cases each year, it was difficult for Leider to find information.

So in 1999, she founded the Sarcoma Alliance (www.sarcomaalliance.com), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support, education and guidance for those with the disease. To raise funds for the Sarcoma Alliance, Munemitsu founded the Ocean of Hope Campaign.

Campaign members hope to raise at least $250,000 this year for the alliance by participating in the Catalina Classic, an annual event for more than 20 years.

“This literally changed my life, and it changed my outlook on life in a sense,” Munemitsu said of both his friendship with Leider and his involvement with the campaign. “We are just humans going through this world, and for me it personally took a friend’s illness and watching her face her own mortality that made me aware that we all have to give back.”

During past Catalina Classics, Leider would wait at the Manhattan Beach Pier to greet each of the campaign’s paddlers as they came ashore. Although he will not see Leider’s smiling face as he wades out of the water today, Munemitsu said he knows she will be there in spirit.

“She told me, ‘If I’m not there, I’ll definitely be watching from the best seat in the house,’ ” Munemitsu said. “She will be there with us.”