Graham's 'Mole Patrol'

Graham's 'Mole Patrol'

When she started the Billy Foundation in 1996, Karen Graham was a mother with a mission to educate others about the dangers of skin cancer. Two years earlier, Graham lost her son, Billy, to melanoma at age 22—and her mission hasn’t changed.

“When Billy first came home from the hospital after being diagnosed, I told him ‘We’re going to beat this disease’,” she says now. “I started the Billy Foundation because I had a promise to keep.”

Now Graham, who lives in Castro Valley, a quiet suburb of San Francisco, is known worldwide for her efforts to fight skin cancer. Every year, she hits American beaches, festivals, and fairs in her white “Mole Patrol” van to offer free skin cancer screenings to the public. In the Billy Foundation’s tents, volunteer dermatologists have screened thousands for skin cancer since 1996. Graham also produces educational sun safety programs—“Sun Safe Kids”—for grade school students throughout California.

When she started the Billy Foundation, Graham knew little about melanoma. She educated herself by going to scientific conferences in the United States and Europe and talking to experts in preventing and treating the disease. In hundreds of phone calls to drug companies and nonprofit organizations, she raised money to support her new organization.

Last year Graham made news when she supported a bill in the California Legislature nicknamed “Billy’s Bill for Sun Safety.” It mandates that schools cannot prohibit children from wearing hats while playing outside.

“I kept getting calls from parents who had sun-sensitive children, saying that schools were not allowing kids to play outside with hats, even with a doctor’s note. Instead they kept the children inside,” Graham says. “That really rubbed me the wrong way.”

She then put together a 600-page book of information on sun exposure and skin cancer that she distributed at state Senate hearings. She also gave an 18-question sun safety and skin cancer poll to 20 different health or campus safety officials in California schools. Only one official got all the questions right, she told state senators in the hearings.

As a result of Graham’s efforts, the bill passed easily and went into effect January 2002.

Graham also helps maintain an educational website that cancer patients can use to get information about their disease. By pressing the “Cancer Profiler” hyperlink on the Billy Foundation website, one is taken to a site where a person’s diagnosis can be entered. The user automatically receives the latest news about cutting-edge treatments and clinical trials.

It was this website that Bill Lockridge, a firefighter in Livermore, Calif., turned to when diagnosed with melanoma stage III in 1998. From the site he found out about interferon treatments that eventually put his cancer into remission. Graham’s foundation also paid for his visit to a world-renowned physician on melanoma.

“Karen is very passionate about defeating skin cancer and well-educated on melanoma,” says Lockridge, a father of six. “Without her efforts I wouldn’t be here today. She’s incredible.”

Graham’s passion is still fueled by the memory of her son’s struggle with skin cancer, she says.

“After his death, I felt that his life couldn’t be in vain,” she says.” I had made a promise to Billy to beat skin cancer—and there’s nothing more tenacious than a mother’s promise.”

Barbara Boughton is a freelance writer from El Cerrito, Calif.

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