52 Charity Walks, and Still Counting

Wearing a banner with the names of loved ones diagnosed with breast cancer on her back, Barbara Jo Kirshbaum looked like a cape-clad superhero Saturday.

The dawn-hour sun had barely risen over a park beside the Queen Mary in Long Beach when Kirshbaum embarked on what her friends and family said was another heroic journey.

Since 1998, the 67-year-old Upland resident has walked 3,000 miles in the name of charity and, as a result, raised $560,000 for research to combat the deadly disease.

This weekend marked the beginning of her 52nd charity walk -- the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer L.A. Beaches. She walked 26.2 miles from Long Beach to Torrance and back alongside 1,350 other participants Saturday. And like some of the others who took part, Kirshbaum will walk another 13.1 miles today.

“She is a legend,” said Karen Borkowsky, an event organizer and a breast cancer survivor. “Everyone who walks [in the Avon Foundation events] knows her. She’s so inspiring that people continue to support her year after year.”

Kirshbaum walks so much each year that she says she goes through five pairs of sneakers. On Saturday, she was wearing a backpack that carried water with a rubber straw that extended over her shoulder. The banner on her back was affixed with ribbons with names attached in a collage of white, blue and pink.

“People say, ‘You’re a hero,’ but it’s hard to relate to that,” Kirshbaum said. “I’m just out there walking and raising money for the cause. I understand that can be inspiration for people.”

“I really want the message to get out that this is about people taking better care of themselves, women doing self-exams and getting regular mammograms.”

Oddly enough, Kirshbaum got involved seven years ago on a whim. She read an advertisement in a newspaper for a breast cancer benefit walk from Santa Barbara to Malibu.

Kirshbaum had spent the last two decades exercising and discovering new physical challenges, including climbing Mt. Whitney and hiking the Grand Canyon. She figured the coastal walk would push her even further. Although Kirshbaum, a family and marriage therapist, had no family members battling breast cancer then, she said she was compelled to do it for her clients who were struggling with the disease.

First, she needed to raise $1,700 to enter the event, so she wrote a letter to her friends and family explaining what she was doing. “I got such an incredible response,” Kirshbaum said. “By the time the walk came around three months later, I had raised $17,000.” It snowballed from there.

By the end of the year she had raised $25,000. By the fourth year she was pulling in $50,000. And by 2002 she was regularly raising $100,000.

It wasn’t just friends and family who were donating anymore. It was random people who crossed her path, such as the exterminator who fumigated her house once and now gives $5,000 a year toward Kirshbaum’s efforts. And the man she met during a charity walk in L.A. who had been instructed by his grandmother to give $100 to someone inspirational. He now gives money regularly as well as airplane miles so she can travel to charity events around the country.

“I think people recognize what she’s doing is special. She’s walking all these miles,” said Kirshbaum’s husband, Bob, who follows his wife to every event.

The 67-year-old doctor raises banners of encouragement along the route for his wife and other walkers that feature riffs on popular lines from TV, such as “Breast Cancer, You’re Fired” and “No More Breast Cancer, That’s Hot.”

So far this year, Barbara Jo Kirshbaum has started and finished every Avon Foundation charity walk -- in Boston; Chicago; Denver; San Francisco; Charlotte, N.C.; and Washington, D.C. After the two-day L.A. event, Kirshbaum will travel in two weeks to New York for the final walk.

On Saturday, a sea of people in pink whose wide-ranging wardrobes included such touches as feather boas and rhinestone sunglasses stretched to the sound of pulsating dance music before beginning a journey that could last 12 hours.

Some listened while wiping away tears as speakers on a stage described the somber statistics facing women: Every three minutes, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer; 40,000 will die of the disease each year.

By 7 a.m., it had been announced that the event had already raised $3 million, with much more yet to be counted.

Kirshbaum, who was walking with two of her three daughters and her son, was flanked by one of her biggest supporters, a Chicago woman who began participating in the walks four years ago to overcome her obesity. Sandra Jordan lost 200 pounds and became close friends with the Kirshbaums.

Jordan, 42, could rely on the Kirshbaum family to pick her up from hotels anywhere in the country where the walks were occurring. Because the walks can last hours, Jordan and Kirshbaum often end up engrossed in conversation.

Kirshbaum says she has no plans to stop. Information about her upcoming walks and how to donate can be found on her website at www.bjkcounselor.com.