Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
Hope comes in a bottle of water

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Awhile back, Trish May pushed a cart around the grocery store, shopping for a cure for breast cancer.

May settled on bottled water — something healthy that people buy without much thought to where the profits go.

May is seeking to change that thinking with Athena, a bottled water for which 100 percent of the net profits go to Northwest cancer research initiatives.

May, 49, launched Athena in July, after losing her mother to ovarian cancer in 1992, and being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer that same year. (She is now cancer-free.)

While there is a lot of emotion behind Athena, there is also a fair bit of marketing genius. May spent 14 years as a marketing executive at Microsoft, where PowerPoint was her "baby."

She searched for a healthy product around which to build her nonprofit: Tomato sauce? Fruit drinks?

She also consulted with the minds behind Paul Newman's food line, Newman's Own, which donates net profits from the sale of salad dressing, popcorn, tomato sauce and lemonade to charity.

The water is a way for people to support a cure while not having to attend one of many fund-raisers put on in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Even better, the support continues well beyond October, as part of our daily routine, one bottle at a time. It's that simple, and that smart.

The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance gives patients a bottle of Athena with every mammogram and serves it to those undergoing chemotherapy.

Safeway and Tully's stores have been stocking Athena for weeks; the QFC chain just signed on. It hasn't been a hard sell, which is a blessing — and a curse.

"Everybody has a story of how cancer has touched them," May said. "Everybody."

But behind Athena's marketing research are more pressing numbers:

Puget Sound has the highest incidence of breast cancer among the nine U.S. urban areas tracked by the National Cancer Institute. And the American Cancer Society says that Washington state has the highest incidence of breast cancer in the country, with 145.2 cases per 100,000 population.

May can only venture why: Maybe it has to do with the number of women having children later in life; or that they are having fewer children.

"Nevertheless," May said, "it's got to stop. I saw what happened to Mom and I saw what happened to me and I didn't want it to happen to anyone else. What keeps motivating me is the people."

Athena Partners has big plans coming out of its small office: The three-member staff covers operations, sales and communications.

And the Athena Web site (www.athenapartners.org) is constantly updated with links to the top Web sites for breast-cancer patients and survivors.

May believes this area has the potential to be the leading breast-cancer research area in the country.

And if the money to power that effort can be contained in a bottle of water, all the better.

"It's more than water," May said. "It's hope."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists

She will drink to Sherry, et al.

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