7,500 brave cold for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer 5K

La'Shunta Terry can do cold weather.

After she underwent a lumpectomy, six rounds of chemotherapy and eight weeks of radiation to destroy the disease that robbed her of a mother, blustery weather does not rank as a challenge.

The 29-year-old -- already a two-year breast-cancer survivor -- just tugged her hood a little tighter yesterday and walked in the eighth annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer 5K Walk. She was joined by thousands of others motivated by memories of family members who had died of the disease and a steely determination to help the next generation.

"I came so that she doesn't have to," Chester resident Shelia Harlin said simply, pointing to her 11-year-old family member, Victoria Hughes.

Victoria traveled from North Carolina with her mother to walk in memory of her grandmother. Peeking between a hot pink feather boa and a fuchsia crown, Victoria took credit for the team name: "Grandma's Angels."

She wasn't the only pint-size picture of pink in a sea of hues that popped against the gray sky over the plazas at Eighth and Canal streets.

Olivia Pelli, 5, sporting a puffy winter coat, bobbed alongside her mother. Olivia was largely unaware that she was the reason Ashley Pelli spent yesterday snaking across Richmond bridges on foot.

On her walk Web page, the 25-year-old mom posted a picture of Olivia smelling a rose with the caption: "so she may live in a time when mammograms are no longer necessary."

Pelli, like so many others, was also walking for the multiple women in her family who have faced down breast cancer.

American Cancer Society spokesman Domenick Casuccio said after the event that roughly 7,500 walkers raised more than $500,000 for cancer research, support programs and lobbying efforts.

Terry, who lost her mother to breast cancer when she was 12 and then waged her own battle with the disease at age 27, urges other women to be proactive.

"I just recommend people don't get paralyzed by their own fear," she said, explaining that her mother did not work quickly to fight her cancer.

So when Terry found a lump in her breast during a self-exam on a Friday night, she said, she was in the doctor's office that Monday. She said that after surgery and treatment, "I'm 100 percent cancer-free, and I give all the thanks and praise to God."

She now works with people in similar situations through the cancer society and her church. Part of that work is attending such events as yesterday's walk.

"It shows the people that fought the disease, we walk in their memory, and the people who are fighting it now, it gives them hope," said the Richmond native, adding with a broad smile: "I'd be here if it was snowing and sleeting."

Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or .