Adrienne Leigh Boardman, August 18, 1987 - October 1, 2009

Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our loved ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy ~ Author Unknown

At approximately 10:55am on October 1st 2009 Adrienne passed away from Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

As she had done for more than half of her young life she fought her disease courageously until the very end, a disease that was described to us as "the good cancer" when she was diagnosed on December 12, 1996 at the age of 9.

Adrienne took her illness in stride right from the beginning and even after her Hodgkin's Lymphoma had become refractory and it became increasingly clear that the odds were against her, she never gave up hoping that one day a cure would be found for her and others in her situation. She truly lived life to the fullest and never let cancer get in the way of achieving her goals and dreams. Although she had missed almost two years of high school while undergoing two stem cell transplants she graduated with honors with the rest of her class. In May 2009 she joined the ranks of college graduates when she received her Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from Claremont McKenna.

In 2007 (during her Junior year) she managed to fulfill one of her biggest dreams by living in New York City for six months while attending Columbia University as a visiting student.

Three days before she was hospitalized on August 23rd, Adrienne was in Santa Barbara celebrating her 22nd birthday and her brother's 21st. She was ready to start graduate school at UNLV the following week and only let her mother cancel her enrollment after she had been in hospital for a week and realized she would not be able to catch up. Nothing ever stopped her from living as normal a life as she could possible live and she truly lived up to her own words: "Though I've now had cancer for most of my life, I no longer plan my life around it. Instead I try to plan cancer around my life."

As a Team in Training Honoree she inspired many and helped raise enormous amounts of funds for hematological cancer research, she even walked the Honolulu Marathon and a few Half Marathons herself.

Although she is no longer with us, Adrienne will live on in all of us whose lives she had touched.