Sandy Goldberg

Founder and Director, A Silver Lining Foundation

I always considered myself to be one of the lucky ones — in good health, delighted with my job and surrounded by a loving family and friends. In 2000 that was shattered in an instant when I heard: "You have breast cancer and you need to have surgery immediately.” As NBC5's on air Nutrition Contributor I decided to share my experience with our viewers, not the norm in 2000. For the next 14 months the cameras were ever present and the resulting special, One Woman's Story, won an Emmy. More importantly it brought cancer out of the closet. Afterwards, I was given the opportunity to create a cable show on CAN TV for The American Cancer Society where viewers called in live with their questions. That 13 week series changed my life. There are the haves and the have-nots where access to timely quality medical care is concerned. The CAN TV viewers were, I discovered, using our show as their primary care physician. Every week I would return calls that did not make it on air and would offer suggestions from the perspective of one who had access to anything and everything medicine had to offer. My eyes were opened — people were not reaching out for help because they felt they weren't worthy due to a lack of financial circumstance. Awful. The night the foundation was born, I came home from the cable show and burst into tears and spoke about what I was hearing. My husband — a man of few words — asked what I was going to do about it. "Start a foundation." I said. At that moment I heard my mom's voice: she had two favorite sayings: "There is always a silver lining" "We are all family and we have to help each other through the tough times." And in 2002, A Silver Lining Foundation was born. Our goal is to someday take these programs nationwide. Our mission is to provide that same sense of inclusion, warmth and love coupled with timely and dignified access to cancer resource information, outreach and testing. Visit us at: www.asilverliningfoundation.org