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In Conversation: San Diego Affiliate Volunteer Leaders
San Diego Affiliate volunteers Anggie Becorest (Sponsorship Chair), Erika Jimenez (Team & Individual Development Chair), Kellie Ellerman (Affiliate Chair), and Madelaine Macauley (PurpleStride Chair) spoke with Community Engagement Coordinator Paula Mukherjee about their personal volunteer journeys and shared affiliate goals. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Paula: How did you each first get involved with PanCAN?
Anggie: I’ll be a 27-year survivor this year. I think it was 2013 when I decided that it was time to give back to this community. I Google searched “volunteer for pancreatic cancer research” and up came PanCAN. I sent an email, and they connected me right away with the Affiliate Chair at the time, who really wanted to go into sponsorship. Within two months of sending that email, I was the Affiliate Chair.
Erika: My first PanCAN PurpleStride was in 2013 and I saw Anggie there; she was the survivor speaker. My dad was diagnosed that year with stage IV pancreatic cancer. I found PurpleStride online and got my family involved. It was a last-minute thing, but we ended up being the number one fundraising team. I started volunteering in 2014, and I've been volunteering ever since.
Kellie: I heard about PanCAN for the first time in late 2006 when my dad was diagnosed. I was living in Boston and my family was in Chicago. My sister found PanCAN and started to get involved. My dad passed a couple months later. I ran the Chicago Marathon that year in his honor and donated the proceeds to PanCAN. I moved to San Diego in 2013, and that year was my first PurpleStride. For the first few years, I just had a team and would show up for PurpleStride. I then started volunteering with more regularity.
Anggie: I remember meeting you in 2013.
Erika: 2013, all of our first PurpleStride events in San Diego.
Kellie: That's wild.
Erika: None of us knew each other at the time and look at us now.
Madelaine: My dad was diagnosed in the spring of 2012. I was 19. He passed away in October. I had just finished my freshman year of college and I was living in Cape May, New Jersey. I looked up 5Ks and Philadelphia PurpleStride was a couple weeks later. I moved to Philly in 2017 or 2018 and I was the Media Chair for one in-person PurpleStride and then virtually. Then I moved to San Diego. I just did my second PurpleStride here. Anggie brought me in. It's been really great.
Kellie: She's been killing it ever since!
Paula: It sounds like PurpleStride is a common touchpoint between all of you. PurpleStride San Diego raised over $440,000, well over your $400,000 goal. Congratulations! How was the lead-up to event day?
Madelaine: It's funny; when I was at PurpleStride last year, I thought “Oh, it just kind of runs itself,” and I thought I took pretty good notes. But this year, I had a lot going on personally and I was trying to stay on top of it. The only issue that really happened was the DJ not being able to play; other than that, we didn't run into any significant problems. I definitely made note of some last-minute things that could be taken care of ahead of time.
There was a drastic increase in the last two weeks with participant registration and money raised. I hadn’t paid close attention to the numbers, but that’s when I started paying attention and I was really excited. I'm also really competitive; I like winning.
Anggie: I think we were at 62% two weeks before the event day. We had a meeting, and I was very positive: “We're so close. I think we can do it.” We did it and then some. The team really pulled together. We have the regulars who've been doing this in San Diego for a really long time. Having a consistent group of people is super-duper helpful. To have fresh perspectives, like Madelaine's perspective – I love that. That just adds to our success.
Paula: It sounds like you have a great balance. Erika, how was it working with team captains and individual fundraisers?
Erika: Because I've been doing this for a while, it's like second nature for me. When I first took this on, during the last month before PurpleStride it seemed like a full-time job to reach out to team captains and fundraisers and get them on board with fundraising. We still have that crunch time in the last month, but it's a lot easier for me now. I've got my own timeline that I developed. One nice thing about being in the same position for so long is that you learn what works and what doesn't work.
It's nice to have that connection with team captains who have been doing this just as long or even longer than I have, but then also meeting new people. It's a little bittersweet — everyone's coming here because they have a connection to pancreatic cancer — but it's neat to see how PanCAN has helped people get through these journeys, even after they've lost their loved ones. I see them coming back, year after year, and making it just as much of a priority as it was when their loved ones were alive. That is what's fulfilling for me: building relationships with people.
Paula: Robert Duran was a beloved member of your San Diego Affiliate community and of our larger PanCAN community. We were really heartbroken to hear about his death in April, right before PurpleStride. I'd love to hear about Robert and the role that he played at PurpleStride San Diego.
Anggie: He was an amazing person. He always had a positive outlook. He was always one of our biggest cheerleaders. I can't even picture him without a big smile on his face. It was definitely a huge loss when we found out right before PurpleStride that he had passed.
Kellie: He was a go-getter, and you could see that in everything that he did. Last year he and I had a fundraising competition on the Friday before PurpleStride. I think I was the number two fundraiser, and he was number four. We were going back and forth. It was hour by hour and he'd one-up me by a dollar sometimes. Because of our little competition, I ended up raising $6,000 or $7,000 in less than 10 hours. It was amazing. He won and it was really cute the next day at PurpleStride, when we were on stage standing next to each other and joking with each other about it.
Such a happy person. Such a big loss for us.
Erika: His smile just lit up any room and that's what always sticks with me. He went through good times and bad times, but I was always amazed by how much he was still willing to volunteer. I remember there was one time he was emailing us from the hospital about PurpleStride. That speaks to the type of person he was, the fight that he had in him, and how this was so important to him.
Paula: What are your goals for your affiliate in the coming year?
Anggie: I would like to see us cultivating a new class of volunteers. While we have a lot of experience, I think fresh ideas are great. Bringing people in and helping mentor them to do more things than what we've been doing is great. That’s one big goal for me.
Madelaine: I think it would be cool to expand PurpleStride beyond the event day.
Anggie: Build more of a year-round community with the team captains and Grand Club members.
Kellie: Maybe even a quarterly event, because that's a good way to pull people in.
Anggie: How do we get competition started earlier?
Kellie: That's a good thing we could strategize on too.
Paula: You've all been touched by pancreatic cancer in different ways and have volunteered for a number of years. What keeps you motivated as a volunteer?
Madelaine: My dad lived for six months. He was 51. When my dad was sick my parents didn't keep me in the loop at all about his diagnosis. I knew he had cancer, but I did not know what kind. I didn't realize it until this year, but there was such a disconnect between me and my dad’s cancer journey.
My dad owned a bar and he was a pretty well-known person in the community. He always had a lot of waitresses that were nursing students in Philly and there were a lot of hospitals around there. One of his waitresses had started a foundation for pediatric cancer patients. He always helped and always had an event at the bar. The spring that he was sick, we had the event, and it was the biggest one. So many people came out to support it – but it was for the children's hospital. It wasn't for anything related to pancreatic cancer. That's something that always impacted me; he was so sick, and he was still so generous.
This year it really hit me – 10 years ago, somebody was doing this for me. And that's what it takes – people doing things even if it's not necessarily for them.
Erika: When I lost my dad, I made a vow to myself. It was really important to me to pick up his fight where he left off. This is my way of doing that.
Kellie: For me, it’s similar in regard to finding a way to take a tragedy in my life and turn it into a life purpose. It's all the people who we've lost that we're motivated to keep alive in our hearts, but also to fight for the ones who can catch it early. That's obviously the ultimate goal.
It's also being that person who people can go to when they know somebody who has been diagnosed. There was a girl who I happened to meet in Colorado, and she ended up moving to San Diego. She joined my PurpleStride team and fundraised. Two years later, her mom got pancreatic cancer and passed. She was at PurpleStride this time with her own team.
Somebody said to me one time, “You're the PanCAN girl.” You know what? That's good. A woman in my office had a friend who was diagnosed. She said to me, “What do I do? How can I do this?” People are lost. I said, “Call PanCAN Patient Services, it's free.” I’m now able to be a resource, connect people with PanCAN, and then support them if things go the way they have for many of us.
Anggie: Each of us feels like we're making an impact even though we're just one individual. We are PanCAN ambassadors.
Paula: I love hearing your stories. Thank you for everything that you are doing for PanCAN!
Please feel free to contact Anggie Becorest (abecorest@pancanvolunteer.org), Erika Jimenez (sd_teams@pancanvolunteer.org), Kellie Ellerman (kellermann@pancanvolunteer.org), Madelaine Macauley (madmacauley@gmail.com), or Paula Mukherjee (pmukherjee@pancan.org) with any questions.
Paula: How did you each first get involved with PanCAN?
Anggie: I’ll be a 27-year survivor this year. I think it was 2013 when I decided that it was time to give back to this community. I Google searched “volunteer for pancreatic cancer research” and up came PanCAN. I sent an email, and they connected me right away with the Affiliate Chair at the time, who really wanted to go into sponsorship. Within two months of sending that email, I was the Affiliate Chair.
Erika: My first PanCAN PurpleStride was in 2013 and I saw Anggie there; she was the survivor speaker. My dad was diagnosed that year with stage IV pancreatic cancer. I found PurpleStride online and got my family involved. It was a last-minute thing, but we ended up being the number one fundraising team. I started volunteering in 2014, and I've been volunteering ever since.
Kellie: I heard about PanCAN for the first time in late 2006 when my dad was diagnosed. I was living in Boston and my family was in Chicago. My sister found PanCAN and started to get involved. My dad passed a couple months later. I ran the Chicago Marathon that year in his honor and donated the proceeds to PanCAN. I moved to San Diego in 2013, and that year was my first PurpleStride. For the first few years, I just had a team and would show up for PurpleStride. I then started volunteering with more regularity.
Anggie: I remember meeting you in 2013.
Erika: 2013, all of our first PurpleStride events in San Diego.
Kellie: That's wild.
Erika: None of us knew each other at the time and look at us now.
Madelaine: My dad was diagnosed in the spring of 2012. I was 19. He passed away in October. I had just finished my freshman year of college and I was living in Cape May, New Jersey. I looked up 5Ks and Philadelphia PurpleStride was a couple weeks later. I moved to Philly in 2017 or 2018 and I was the Media Chair for one in-person PurpleStride and then virtually. Then I moved to San Diego. I just did my second PurpleStride here. Anggie brought me in. It's been really great.
Kellie: She's been killing it ever since!
Paula: It sounds like PurpleStride is a common touchpoint between all of you. PurpleStride San Diego raised over $440,000, well over your $400,000 goal. Congratulations! How was the lead-up to event day?
Madelaine: It's funny; when I was at PurpleStride last year, I thought “Oh, it just kind of runs itself,” and I thought I took pretty good notes. But this year, I had a lot going on personally and I was trying to stay on top of it. The only issue that really happened was the DJ not being able to play; other than that, we didn't run into any significant problems. I definitely made note of some last-minute things that could be taken care of ahead of time.
There was a drastic increase in the last two weeks with participant registration and money raised. I hadn’t paid close attention to the numbers, but that’s when I started paying attention and I was really excited. I'm also really competitive; I like winning.
Anggie: I think we were at 62% two weeks before the event day. We had a meeting, and I was very positive: “We're so close. I think we can do it.” We did it and then some. The team really pulled together. We have the regulars who've been doing this in San Diego for a really long time. Having a consistent group of people is super-duper helpful. To have fresh perspectives, like Madelaine's perspective – I love that. That just adds to our success.
Paula: It sounds like you have a great balance. Erika, how was it working with team captains and individual fundraisers?
Erika: Because I've been doing this for a while, it's like second nature for me. When I first took this on, during the last month before PurpleStride it seemed like a full-time job to reach out to team captains and fundraisers and get them on board with fundraising. We still have that crunch time in the last month, but it's a lot easier for me now. I've got my own timeline that I developed. One nice thing about being in the same position for so long is that you learn what works and what doesn't work.
It's nice to have that connection with team captains who have been doing this just as long or even longer than I have, but then also meeting new people. It's a little bittersweet — everyone's coming here because they have a connection to pancreatic cancer — but it's neat to see how PanCAN has helped people get through these journeys, even after they've lost their loved ones. I see them coming back, year after year, and making it just as much of a priority as it was when their loved ones were alive. That is what's fulfilling for me: building relationships with people.
Paula: Robert Duran was a beloved member of your San Diego Affiliate community and of our larger PanCAN community. We were really heartbroken to hear about his death in April, right before PurpleStride. I'd love to hear about Robert and the role that he played at PurpleStride San Diego.
Anggie: He was an amazing person. He always had a positive outlook. He was always one of our biggest cheerleaders. I can't even picture him without a big smile on his face. It was definitely a huge loss when we found out right before PurpleStride that he had passed.
Kellie: He was a go-getter, and you could see that in everything that he did. Last year he and I had a fundraising competition on the Friday before PurpleStride. I think I was the number two fundraiser, and he was number four. We were going back and forth. It was hour by hour and he'd one-up me by a dollar sometimes. Because of our little competition, I ended up raising $6,000 or $7,000 in less than 10 hours. It was amazing. He won and it was really cute the next day at PurpleStride, when we were on stage standing next to each other and joking with each other about it.
Such a happy person. Such a big loss for us.
Erika: His smile just lit up any room and that's what always sticks with me. He went through good times and bad times, but I was always amazed by how much he was still willing to volunteer. I remember there was one time he was emailing us from the hospital about PurpleStride. That speaks to the type of person he was, the fight that he had in him, and how this was so important to him.
Paula: What are your goals for your affiliate in the coming year?
Anggie: I would like to see us cultivating a new class of volunteers. While we have a lot of experience, I think fresh ideas are great. Bringing people in and helping mentor them to do more things than what we've been doing is great. That’s one big goal for me.
Madelaine: I think it would be cool to expand PurpleStride beyond the event day.
Anggie: Build more of a year-round community with the team captains and Grand Club members.
Kellie: Maybe even a quarterly event, because that's a good way to pull people in.
Anggie: How do we get competition started earlier?
Kellie: That's a good thing we could strategize on too.
Paula: You've all been touched by pancreatic cancer in different ways and have volunteered for a number of years. What keeps you motivated as a volunteer?
Madelaine: My dad lived for six months. He was 51. When my dad was sick my parents didn't keep me in the loop at all about his diagnosis. I knew he had cancer, but I did not know what kind. I didn't realize it until this year, but there was such a disconnect between me and my dad’s cancer journey.
My dad owned a bar and he was a pretty well-known person in the community. He always had a lot of waitresses that were nursing students in Philly and there were a lot of hospitals around there. One of his waitresses had started a foundation for pediatric cancer patients. He always helped and always had an event at the bar. The spring that he was sick, we had the event, and it was the biggest one. So many people came out to support it – but it was for the children's hospital. It wasn't for anything related to pancreatic cancer. That's something that always impacted me; he was so sick, and he was still so generous.
This year it really hit me – 10 years ago, somebody was doing this for me. And that's what it takes – people doing things even if it's not necessarily for them.
Erika: When I lost my dad, I made a vow to myself. It was really important to me to pick up his fight where he left off. This is my way of doing that.
Kellie: For me, it’s similar in regard to finding a way to take a tragedy in my life and turn it into a life purpose. It's all the people who we've lost that we're motivated to keep alive in our hearts, but also to fight for the ones who can catch it early. That's obviously the ultimate goal.
It's also being that person who people can go to when they know somebody who has been diagnosed. There was a girl who I happened to meet in Colorado, and she ended up moving to San Diego. She joined my PurpleStride team and fundraised. Two years later, her mom got pancreatic cancer and passed. She was at PurpleStride this time with her own team.
Somebody said to me one time, “You're the PanCAN girl.” You know what? That's good. A woman in my office had a friend who was diagnosed. She said to me, “What do I do? How can I do this?” People are lost. I said, “Call PanCAN Patient Services, it's free.” I’m now able to be a resource, connect people with PanCAN, and then support them if things go the way they have for many of us.
Anggie: Each of us feels like we're making an impact even though we're just one individual. We are PanCAN ambassadors.
Paula: I love hearing your stories. Thank you for everything that you are doing for PanCAN!
Please feel free to contact Anggie Becorest (abecorest@pancanvolunteer.org), Erika Jimenez (sd_teams@pancanvolunteer.org), Kellie Ellerman (kellermann@pancanvolunteer.org), Madelaine Macauley (madmacauley@gmail.com), or Paula Mukherjee (pmukherjee@pancan.org) with any questions.
From left to right: Kellie Ellerman (Affiliate Chair), Madelaine Macauley (PurpleStride Chair), Anggie Becorest (Sponsorship Chair), and Erika Jimenez (Team & Individual Development Chair) at a post-PurpleStride celebration.
