Maria Fundora looked out on the crowd at her annual fundraising dinner for pancreatic cancer research, and she saw hope. Twelve survivors of one of the deadliest forms of cancer were there, and that was hugely uplifting to Maria.

“When I first started, there were no survivors in the room, only family members and friends who, like me, have lost someone to pancreatic cancer,” she said. But then she remembered the 38-year-old, married mother of three who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on June 3 of this year and was dead on June 10. And so she goes on.