Hundreds of Relay for Life teams raised their banners high as they marched in this year's parade.
"It’s exciting because everyone's here celebrating the same thing," said Emerald Pelayo of Team PepsiCo.
They had team names like Miller's Cancer Killers and Cancer Crushers. Many people represent schools, companies and family who died from cancer.
"If we didn't lose the loved ones we wouldn't be here fighting to save other ones,” said Mackenzie Brown, whose grandfather died from cancer.
And that's what the Survivor Lap is about, continuing the fight to find cancer's cure.
"I sat down and I cried, said Debra McGee, when she found out she had cancer in 2003. “I just could not believe it, but if knew it ran in my family.”
After years of radiation and chemotherapy, she's happy to be cancer free for six years now, and loves walking the Survivor Lap.
"Every year, I watch it grow and get bigger and bigger,” she said. “That makes me proud because it means more people are fighting for their lives."
More than 2,500 survivors walked around the Relay for Life site and that's 500 more than last year. The lap makes Jinni Cassidy recall the pain she felt in 2007 when she was diagnosed with throat cancer.
"I couldn't swallow, it felt like I had something stuck in my throat, and then they found it,” Cassidy said.
She said she never smoked and because of cancer, doctors burned her saliva glands, so now, she cannot eat and only drinks Ensure and water. She says she has lost 55 pounds.
"So many people are out here healthy,” she said. “I just think it's wonderful, I’m a lucky lady to be alive."
And many of the survivors feel there's strength in numbers when they come together to celebrate conquering cancer.
"When you're first diagnosed it's a shock,” said Steve Shoffner, who once had prostate cancer. “Things like this, it's an uplift to realize that people do get through it, it's not the end of the world."
