Polly Letofsky

In the summer of 1974, I started to discover the world. Every morning I would scoop up The Minneapolis Tribune from the front steps and spread it across the breakfast table. I read about Thailand, Cambodia, India and Turkey, where 12-year-olds lived very different lives from me and my friends, who spent summer days climbing trees and playing kickball in the front yard.

One morning I came across a photo of a man in a big, floppy hat, walking down an empty mountain highway in Colorado. The caption read, “David Kunst, walking through Colorado on his way home to Minnesota to become the first man to walk around the world.”

Wow, I thought, staring at the photo. I didn’t know you were allowed to think of such a thing if you were from Minnesota. Fascinated that the simple movement of putting one foot in front of the other could transport you through countries, across borders, over mountains, and into various cultures, peoples and ideas, I was inspired. “That’s how I want to see the world someday — I’ll walk!” I thought.

But I knew I was thinking way outside the box for a 12-year-old girl from Minnesota, so I tucked the idea into the back of my head.

Fast-forward ahead 22 years, and life’s journey had brought me to living in Vail, CO. A lot of women around me had been diagnosed with breast cancer — friends, colleagues and two aunts, one of whom died from the disease. I got nervous and went to the doctor to get a mammogram, where I was told something that inadvertently changed my life. The doctor said, “You don’t need to worry about getting breast cancer. You can’t get breast cancer if it doesn’t run on your mother’s side of the family.”

After my appointment, I returned to work, where a friend asked how it all went. I told her that I was one of the lucky ones — I can’t get breast cancer. She set me straight. “Of course you can get breast cancer!” she said. “Every single woman in the world is at risk for getting breast cancer! Eighty percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no known risk factors at all. The bottom line is that we have no idea what causes breast cancer! This is the sort of bad information that’s going on in the world, and this is what we have to put an end to!” And she fumed about my doctor for the rest of the day.

It was that night walking home that I had my VIV Moment. All the stars aligned, and I knew I would do that walk I’d always wanted to do. I immediately loved the idea of a woman walking for women, educating women all over the world about this disease that unfortunately bonds us all from the smallest nooks to the largest cities.

My head started spinning with all the questions: Can I walk 15 miles a day for 5 years? Is it safe? How do I protect myself? How can I afford it? How do I get sponsors? How do I make a business plan? What countries can I get through? How do I get across the water? And during the last mile walking home that night, I started planning my GlobalWalk for Breast Cancer.

After three years of planning and five years of walking, I, in fact, did finish my walk around the world on July 20, 2004, with 14,124 miles, 22 countries and four continents to raise more than $250,000 for 13 breast cancer organizations around the world.

The majority of fundraising was done with the help of Lions Clubs International, who would pass me from town to town and help plan fundraising events. The more press they generated, the more people on the road got involved. One time, during a traffic jam, I walked right past all the stuck cars until someone knew who I was from the newspapers. When he got out to make a donation, it started an avalanche of donations through the traffic jam.

When possible, I worked with breast cancer organizations in each country. Along with my international sponsor of the Lions Clubs, these groups organized educational forums in many villages in the Third World nations, where local doctors came and spoke to the women of the village in the local language.

There was, of course, the whole series of challenges presented by Mother Nature: a 7.2 earthquake in the Mojave Desert, the “flood of the century” in Brisbane, Australia, the extreme heat (120 degrees Fahrenheit at the highest in India) and the sleet and blizzards of an Iowa December.

There were also the language barriers, of course, the cultural head-butts, particularly when it came to very male-dominated cultures. The biggest challenge was walking through a Muslim country during and immediately after 9/11 as a Jewish American woman talking about breasts.

I’ve been told many times that after hearing me speak or hearing my story, women would book a mammogram. As a motivational speaker, I talk about breast cancer, in particular the importance of early detection and second and third opinions. But the take-away of my speeches is more about perseverance and breaking down those daunting journeys in our lives into very small manageable increments, and taking it step-by-step.