Carrie (left), Megan (top), Gilan (right) and mother Carol Ann Read.

“It was very scary. Even though my grandmother had breast cancer and was a survivor, it wasn’t something I ever thought to take lightly,” says Megan, who was then 27 and residing in Virginia. The middle daughter in the Read family, she’s now a wife and busy mother of three, and lives in Lafayette. Her older sister, Gilan Read, lives with her two children in Carmel and her younger sister, Carrie Read Mullins, makes her home in Gig Harbor, Washington with her husband and infant daughter.

“My father didn’t want to alarm any of us,” Megan says, recalling the phone conversation. “He said, ‘Your mother’s going to be fine. We’re going to fight this.’ He needed to hear that as much as anybody did.”

Three years later, Megan’s mother lost her courageous battle with breast cancer, and the family resolved to help others fight the disease. When her father heard from Robert Albo, M.D., Carol’s physician and a family friend, that Alta Bates Summit Medical Center planned to create the first community-based breast health center in the East Bay, he jumped at the chance to lend his support. “Dr. Albo told my father that they could really use his help and pitched the idea to him about the center. My dad says he was really on board and that he thought, ‘What better cause, what better future can I invest in?’ ”

The Project Takes Hold
Peter, who oversees a Berkeley-based grocery company along with his dear brother, Steven, would go on to make a commitment to the project that was both heartfelt and substantial. The Read family offered a challenge grant to get the ball rolling toward making the $12.5 million center a reality. “Their gift was the turning point,” says Lisa Bailey, M.D., the surgical oncologist who had first proposed the idea for the center to hospital administration in 1999 and is now its medical director. “The grant gave us focus and we were able to approach others to match their gift. It was critical in moving the project forward with fundraising.”

Not that the center was a hard sell. “Alta Bates Summit was providing very good care for breast cancer patients on both campuses but it was fragmented,” says Dr. Bailey. “I felt if we could put together a center—one place that addressed all the needs of patients and coordinated care—it would be good for patients and good for their physicians.”

Programs Under Way
Although the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center isn’t scheduled to open at the Providence Pavilion site until 2007, several key staff members are already on the job and working to realize Dr. Bailey’s original vision. “The breast center exists even if the walls don’t exist yet,” she says. “We’re not waiting to provide the services we’ve wanted. We have programs up and running.” Among these is the new Compassionate Peer Advocacy and Support Program, which began in February and links women who are newly diagnosed with women who have experienced breast cancer. New leading-edge technology has also come online at Alta Bates Summit, including digital mammography units and equipment for stereotactic core biopsy. (For more details, see “2006 Groundbreaking for Breast Health Center”)

Dr. Bailey can’t mask her excitement at making tangible progress and having her goal in sight. “This is my passion, what I’ve wanted to see happen,” she says. “I’m just thrilled.” As for the Read family, Lindberg says her dad is “overjoyed. It’s exactly what he’d hoped for.” Her mother, too, “would be pleased,” she adds. “She was such a good soul, such a giving person. I like to think that this is something that’s guided by her, and that her life has really made a difference.”