As Marci Kizziar pulls out her old scrapbooks, she flips through precious memories. Marci and her mother first attended Relay thirteen years ago.
"It was much smaller. It was very intimate. It was just a very close-knit group," said Marci Kizziar a breast cancer survivor.
Since then, Marci and her family have never missed a relay.
"I think everyone in life has a passion and Relay for my family is what we do," said Kizziar
Marci's father was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1982 at the age of 54. Two years later, her father passed away and her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"Everybody in this world is going to be touched by cancer at some point in their life. Whether it's you, your family members, or someone you know, and that touches you. We all have a connection to cancer," said Sylvia Cariker with the Bakersfield Relay for Life.
That connection is the reason the 24-hour fundraiser walk continues to grow every year.
The Relay has moved from Garces High School, to Cal State, to a sod farm south of town last year. But the 40 acres available there weren't enough.
This year, Relay is on a 200 acre piece of land near the airport, with a record-breaking 423 teams.
"We are just elbow to elbow and side to side, what are you going to do? You have 16,000 team members and 20,000 people who come and hang out with you. Everyone wants to support the cure. That's why we're here," said Cariker.
Finding a cure is the reason Marci comes back every year after her father passed in 1984 and grandmother died of cancer. Then two years ago, Marci got the news that she too had breast cancer.
"Probably a month before relay, at a routine checkup with my doctor, I was diagnosed and so I had surgery two days after Relay that year, so I went to Relay and then had the surgery," said Kizziar.
Marci says, early detection saved her life and today she is cancer free.
"We hope that someday cancer will be a memory like chicken pox and measles and that we won't have to keep doing this and it won't continue to be an issue," said Kizziar.
