Cancer hit Kasi Steimer like a sucker punch.

The lump in her breast showed up on a routine mammogram.

“I had no clue,” she said.

She was 42 and a single mom of two daughters. She’d just started dating a man in the Navy. Her life slammed to a halt. She thought, no way this man will stick around.

But he did.

Two years later, Steimer said she’s cancer free and is married to that man. He took her to appointments, shaved her head — and then he shaved his.

This past weekend she joined dozens of other people from across Whidbey Island to participate in Relay for Life, an annual event in Oak Harbor that benefits the American Cancer Society.

More than 40 teams signed up, raising more than $100,000.

“It’s amazing to see the kindness of total strangers,” said Steimer, who teaches fourth grade at Hillcrest Elementary.

“All of us have someone in our lives affected by this.”

The event kicked off Friday at North Whidbey Middle School with a powerful survivors’ lap, with some needing an arm to lean on as they walked the track. Later that evening, the course was lined with illuminated bags that featured names, photos and messages for those fighting the disease and the dead.

All night, people walked in support of the cause.

Don Fabrao is part of a team called the Love Bugs that annually participates. This year they raised $3,000.

The Oak Harbor man’s mother died of cancer several years ago.

Cancer, he said, doesn’t discriminate. And it touches all of us.

“We all have the cell in us I think,” he said. “It just takes something to spark it.”