SPOKANE, Wash. — Lucy Riggs came home feeling sick in October 2021 with what she thought was a lingering case of strep throat.
By November, she was life flighted to Sacred Heart in Spokane and would spend the better part of a year receiving cancer treatment.
"They diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia, which is really aggressive and so they had to treat it very aggressively with chemo," said Catrin Riggs, Lucy's Mom.
Those were hard days, but as Lucy would tell you, sometimes the hardest part was the boredom. Her doctors encouraged her to walk to keep up her strength. She got to know the halls of her hospital floor really, really well.
"Usually with my IV close at hand, you know, long walks with the IV," Lucy joked. "Eventually we named the IVs and dressed them up. One of them was Reginald, had a top hat and a little bowtie. Also a mustache. It was great."
Since Lucy's a bit competitive, those strolls were soon more than exercise.
"I'd walk by and tell them all I was going to do one mile today. And I'd finish the mile, it was barely dinner time so I was like, 'I'm going to do two miles today.' And I'd start walking and do two miles," she said.
All those miles soon measured into something more.
"Pretty soon we started to tally all the laps until it measured up to a marathon," Riggs said. "Then we thought, 'Let's start on marathon number two.'"
That inspired an idea for the oncology unit: Lucy's walks became the 'Red Shoe Challenge,' encouraging other patients to walk. There were prizes for different achievements. For Lucy, it was bragging rights.
"The only one with four marathons. So far," she said.
There were days the walks didn't happen. Though the steps Lucy did take far outpaced those tough times.
"Just that feeling of accomplishment, like I did something today," she said. "It wasn't like, I didn't solve cancer, I didn't do anything that would change the world, but it was an accomplishment and it made me feel good that day."
Now Lucy's back at school at Liberty Bell in Winthrop. In remission -- and back in sports.
"I'm in track again," she said.
"Doing your conditioning with track and field," Riggs added.
Conditioning for the next big walk Lucy will take alongside her family, including the sister who provided life-saving stem cells.
"Then we looked into what would it take to walk Bloomsday, how long is it and when is that. Could we do it as a family to celebrate Lucy's one year since transplant? That's what we decided to do," Riggs said.
Lucy explains that the walks opened her eyes to how one seemingly small act can add up to an immeasurable impact, inspiring so many around her.
"One of the milestones was just getting up out of bed on your own power. I mean, that's where we started from. And by the end you're walking marathons," Riggs said to her daughter. "It's astonishing. You kind of take it in stride but it's amazing.
It's not hard at all to track who's been the most moved.
"Yeah," Riggs said. "It's pretty cool."
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