Yes, she CAN

They don’t charge extra for baggage on this airline and the security lines are pleasantly short. You can sometimes travel with a relative, friend or even a service dog. But you can’t buy this ticket online or through a travel agent. 

 

If you have never heard of Corporate Angel Network (CAN), you’ve probably never had cancer or known someone who had to travel to distant cancer treatment centers. This nationwide non-profit organization arranges free transportation for cancer patients to treatment centers using empty seats on corporate jets.

 

It all grew out of the vision of Greenwich resident and breast cancer survivor Pat Blum.

 

Pat is very matter of fact about her own experience with breast cancer. She was 44 years old in 1969 when she felt a lump. “Two years and a lot of bad medical advice later, I got a mammogram,” says Pat. The mammogram indicated cancer and the result was a radical mastectomy, which was successful despite the significant delay in treatment. Pat attributes her relatively quick recovery to having the good fortune to get to a superior surgeon once she was diagnosed. She recalls his words when she asked him when she could resume playing tennis. He told her, “As soon as you want to; it may hurt, but it won’t harm.”

 

Breast cancer receded into the distance as she resumed her normal life, which including flying as an amateur pilot – Pat had a commercial license with an instrument rating. But the disease stayed in her consciousness. One day many years later, while sitting in a board meeting of the Connecticut chapter of the American Cancer Society, she had an idea. She recounts, “We got onto a discussion of bone marrow transplants, which at the time were only being offered at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. As a pilot, I was very familiar with corporate jets and knew that they frequently flew with empty seats. I suddenly wondered why cancer patients couldn’t use those seats on their way to treatments or to participate in clinical trials.”

 

“My suggestion that day didn’t go over so well – they frankly thought I was nuts,” remembers Pat. But the thought stayed with her and she pursued the idea. Working with her close friend Jay Weinberg, himself a cancer survivor, she came up with a proposal and began approaching friends, flight departments, and chairmen of companies. In a lucky break, the then chairman of Norton Simon Corporation sent a letter to 1,500 of his Fortune-listed peers and CAN was rewarded with 100 positive responses. Pat and Jay started their enterprise with colored index cards loaded into shoeboxes until Jay’s wife Marian came on board and developed a computer program to track patients and flights.

 

Nine months later, the first flight took place, on December 22, 1981. The group arranged 24 flights in 1982.

 

Today, CAN arranges an average of 2,500 flights each year in coordination with 530 American corporations. The organization’s success has attracted much notice and many awards and has also inspired other corporations to donate services. Rental car companies, limousine services and hotel chains all now collaborate with CAN to provide transportation and/or lodging when cancer patients are far from home.

 

Pat Blum, who served as CAN’s president until 1996, is now officially retired, but is very proud to have spearheaded an organization that makes such a vital contribution to cancer patients. As for herself, she still goes for her annual mammogram and is lucky enough to remain breast cancer-free.