A CALL TO ALL WOMEN; CANCER SURVIVOR WANTS TO GIVE HOPE TO OTHERS.

Byline: Robert Monroe Staff Writer

Three years ago, thoughts of death and mortality dominated Barbara Cole's mind.

Now the breast cancer survivor from Calabasas wants to show people how alive she is. She's going to walk 60 miles Oct. 22 to Oct. 24 in the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day.

Cole's daughter, Amy, has her own reason for walking: her mom. Amy Cole doesn't want anyone else to go through the roller coaster of anxiety and dread she and her mother experienced. The walk and the money it raises is a shout to other women to take care of themselves.

``It's hard to turn your head and not hear it,'' said Amy Cole, 26, of Calabasas. ``Maybe you don't take it all in but it's there.''

The Coles are two of nearly 3,000 walkers set to walk from Santa Barbara to Malibu. Last year, 2,300 participants raised $5 million in the inaugural event. Three other cities, New York, Chicago and Atlanta, are also hosting walks this year.

The walks are part of a wave of awareness-raising events nonexistent 25 years ago. At that time only five percent of breast cancers were caught when they were in a pre-invasive state. The percentage is now 30 percent, said Dr. Lawrence Bassett, director of the Iris Cantor Center for Breast Imaging at UCLA. Bassett said he has seen an exponential increase in the survival rate from breast cancer since he began his career in 1975, thanks in part to events like the walk.

``What we're seeing now is that there is a decrease overall not just among women getting screening but among all women so it looks like the word is getting out,'' Bassett said.

Along the way early detection techniques such as self-exams and mammography have been refined and debated. After years of controversy, health organizations including the American Cancer Society have come to the consensus that the age of 40 is the time women should begin demanding mammograms. Because the x-ray-like scans catch only 80 percent of breast tumors, Bassett said women should should operate by a simple mantra.

``If you feel something, it needs to be worked up,'' he said.

The walk funds early detection and education programs around the country. Most of those programs target low-income and minority women.

Neal Mallin is walking to honor the memory of his wife, Betty, a counselor at North Hollywood High School who died of breast cancer last year. She was 62. Mallin thinks she might have lived longer had she found her tumor earlier.

``Had she caught it perhaps a couple years prior, she might have been helped by it,'' he said.

Mallin saw an advertisement of the walk in a newspaper last April and signed up as a way to say good-bye and started training. He still hears her voice though.

``She's saying to me she's very pleased that I got into shape, that I'm doing something to help others and if she were alive today, she'd be doing the walk,'' said Mallin, a 70-year-old Realtor from Valley Village.

The Coles and Mallin, like all the other walkers, committed to raising at least $1,700 each in sponsorships. It sounded like a lot to Barbara Cole but she was surprised by the responses to the appeal letter she sent out months ago.

``I've been getting Christmas presents for months,'' she said.

The money is one thing, said Barbara Cole, whose cancer has been in remission since earlier this year.

But she hopes the sight of her face as she walks, her flushed cheeks, sweat on her brow, will deliver another benefit.

``I'm a very private person,'' she said. ``This was a coming out of the closet, a final close-the-door, I'm-moving-on kind of thing. I'd like there to be a cure but until there is, just getting people to talk about it and educate is good.''

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Photo: Amy, left, and her mother Barbara Cole, breast cancer survivor, will be walking in this year's 60-mile Avon Breast Cancer Walk.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer