Hiking the Rim of Hope

Hike the Rim of hope A terrible day leads to a beautiful place to fight leukemia

THE WORST DAY OF HIS LIFE led Alex Vargas Sr. to the most beautiful place on Earth. How he got to the Grand Canyon is a story of love and hope that has helped bring the entire Vargas family back to the eternal value of doing for others. On that terrible day, October 30, 2004, doctors informed Alex and wife, Glorimary, that their then 13-year-old son, Alex Jr., had leukemia. For four months, he'd suffered pain in his hips that a string of doctors couldn't explain. At the end of her patience, Glorimary took Alex to the hospital where a doctor admitted the boy, and said he wouldn't release him until the problem had been diagnosed. So Glorimary drove home to pack a suitcase, and while there, the doctor called with the results of Alex's blood tests. "He started talking about white blood cell counts and red blood cell counts, and I knew," says Glorimary, whose father had died of cancer in 1990, at the age of 45. "I just collapsed on the kitchen floor and started crying."

The news hit Alex Sr. hard, too. "It's like you're standing in the middle of the railroad tracks, and you see this train coming, and you can't move," says the 36-year-old father of three, a regional accounts manager for the Qwest phone company.

After briefly wondering why it had to happen to their son, the Vargases, of Chandler, got down to business. They began working the phones, doing research and educating themselves about chronic myelogenous leukemia, a form of the disease so rare in children that it occurs in only 2 to 4 percent of all childhood leukemia cases.

They even organized large bone marrow drives in Florida and Puerto Rico, where Glorimary grew up.

Those efforts, in turn, led them to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's innovative new fund-raising program called Hike for Discovery, and that led Alex to the Rim of the Grand Canyon on a brilliant morning in May.

"Glorimary and I decided that the guy upstairs gave us this bump in the road for a reason, and it was to show us that we should help others, not just our son," says Alex, gazing into the great gorge from Mather Point. "That's why I'm here, and it feels really good to me. It feels like a mission accomplished."

The Hike for Discovery got its start in the winter of 2003. The idea's creators, Gene Taylor and his wife, Jo Ann, were walking out of the Canyon along Hermit Trail late one afternoon when they began talking about finding a way to use their knowledge, and the Canyon, to raise money for cancer research.

The Taylors operate a company called The Walking Connection, which organizes hiking adventures around the world.

The couple reached Hermit's Rest and looked back at where they'd been, admiring the sunset, the color and the majesty, and the idea quickly took shape in their minds.

"We decided to utilize our walking program and the magnificence of Arizona to raise money in a way that had never been done before," says Taylor. "The Canyon provided the inspiration, and we basically put together the whole program while sitting there."

Within six months, they were in partnership with the society, which began organizing last year's inaugural hike. The event drew 237 par-