October 07, 2010|By Yeganeh June Torbati, The Baltimore Sun
Sarita Murray looks younger than her 44 years. She greeted visitors to her Northwest Baltimore home on a recent afternoon wearing a short black tutu, oversized pearls around her neck and a fitted white T-shirt bearing an image of a woman's eye made up in shimmery pink shades, much like Murray's on this day.
The eye is the logo for her breast cancer awareness group, Blink Pink, launched a year ago.
Stacked boxes of pink confetti competed with framed photos for prominence along a wall in Murray's living room, evidence of preparations for a fundraising event for Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure- Maryland. The event combines her love of pampering — Murray runs a business organizing children's tea parties — and the cause that has become her life's work.
Blink Pink will aim to provide reconstructive surgery for women who have lost one or both breasts to cancer. Murray expects the organization to get nonprofit status by the beginning of next year.
"There has to be an organization for women to go to, to get money or funding to replace their breasts," she said. "I really believe it could fill a gap for breast cancer survivors."
Getting a mastectomy and breast reconstruction can cost more than $20,000, and the cost can be out of reach for women without insurance, Murray said.
In 2002, when she was a single mother of two daughters, Murray was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in her right breast. Though she had to have a mastectomy just a few weeks later, she counts herself lucky because she was able to get reconstructive surgery. She said she knew as soon as she started recovering that she wanted to start a group to help other women.
But her plans were delayed for almost a decade.
Four months into her recovery, Murray offered to help a family friend who needed someone to care for a newborn baby boy. A few days of caretaking turned into eight years, and Murray now has custody of the boy, Ray Dylan.
When Ray was about a year old, Murray took in another family friend's child, Char, who is now 6 years old and Murray's adopted daughter. Photos of the two children and her two older daughters — one in high school and one in the second year of law school — adorn Murray's house in the Glen neighborhood.
"Blink Pink was put on hold because being a mommy was first," she said.
Now, with her children a little older and with decades of sales experience to draw on, Murray has turned to what she believes is her mission — to help breast cancer survivors get the information and funding needed for reconstructive surgery.
"There are places all over that will help you to remove the cancer, but there are very few if any that will help you with the reconstructive surgery," she said. When the organization becomes a nonprofit, she said, "Blink Pink will probably be the first offering those types of grants and services."
African-American women in particular, Murray said, often have misconceptions about getting implants, which as a black woman, she hopes to dispel.
"I don't think that we are as knowledgeable and we are as aware," she said. "A lot of times people don't do things based on fear or lack of knowledge."
