Katy Romano got involved in the Dempsey Challenge the very first year when a mutual friend of hers and Patrick Dempsey’s pitched her on bicycling and eating lobster in Maine.

The Atlanta woman and her husband decided to make it an annual event, raising more money each time. 

Two years ago, she set an individual challenge record with $22,880. That same year, the healthy 45-year-old was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.

The diagnosis and treatments were not going to stop her from coming up to Lewiston to ride — Romano rescheduled her own chemotherapy treatments to make the event.

Romano will be back again at the seventh annual Dempsey Challenge, healthy and in the No. 2 fundraising slot heading into the final week.

She kicked her own efforts into high gear after hearing so many stories from people who had been to The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing. 

“You cannot believe what these people go through and what that center has meant to them,” said Romano, 47.

Romano, a lifelong car racing fan, grew up in Indianapolis in a family with box seats at the Indy 500. She knew Dempsey as a race car driver before she knew he was an actor, when his race team was based in Atlanta.

That pitch to come the first year — “Do you want to ride some bikes in Maine and eat some lobster and raise money?” — was an easy yes, she said, though she joked the actual trip was a “disaster.”

She and her husband, Joe, both chose the 25-mile trek and mistakenly remembered Maine as being a lot more flat than it really is. They huffed and puffed.

On Joe’s loaner bike, “One (pedal) rotated backward and fell off on the 24th mile,” she said. “The guy was like, ‘I can fix it, but I can’t guarantee you’ll make it all the way back, so you might be stranded in the middle of nowhere.’ My husband was like, ‘Leave it off, I’m all good. Take me back. I want to eat lobster and drink some beer.'”

The couple own four Atlanta restaurants and initially tapped vendors and friends for donations. They expanded from there, eventually organizing an annual major silent auction event.

“It’s not a hard sell,” Romano said. “I think, honestly, having Patrick’s name attached to it certainly doesn’t hurt at all. But generally, I think people in Atlanta are just very philanthropic anyway. They’re always looking to donate and give their time and money to charities. I think all the (Dempsey Center) services being free and helping the families that are associated with the patients, that is also huge to people.”

In 2012, she formed a company, Arm Candy, making silk ribbons with decorative metal attachments that wrap around your wrist, with all of its proceeds going to the Dempsey Challenge. She has sales staff in Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Her team, ARM CANDY UNITED, has raised more than $41,000 headed into the challenge this year and is in second place (to Butler Bros.). 

“That’s what really catapulted everything to that next level,” she said.

Romano’s own experience with cancer began quietly. The mother of three went to the doctor complaining that she was anemic and not feeling like herself. Regular iron pills didn’t help. Sometimes her usual foods would make her sick.

“I would have a glass of wine, I would be sick for days,” Romano said.

She largely ignored it and got on with her busy life until waking up one night with splitting pains, convinced her appendix had burst. It was much worse: She had colon cancer and a tumor that had probably been growing for 10 years.

“Which was kind of strange because I did all of this fundraising for cancer and then all of a sudden it was like, me,” Romano said. “Every time I would interview a doctor (they would say), ‘This cannot be. You don’t fit the profile. You’re healthy, you’re tan, you’re thin, you’re not sedentary, you’re not 90, you don’t eat fried food.’

“Which I soon found out sitting in chemo, that everybody I met that had colon cancer in my chemo room was either in their late 30s or mid-40s,” she said. “I didn’t meet one overweight, sedentary person that had colon cancer.”

Romano now has regular checkups and scans every three months. “At five years, I can be called cancer-free,” she said. “My numbers are all good, all of my scans are all good.”

She’s gotten to know Dempsey in the years since, through the challenge and through racing. Romano said she thinks of him as a dad, a driver and a normal guy.

She’ll be coming to Lewiston for the Dempsey Challenge from Los Angeles, where Romano’s staying for a few months while her two youngest pursue their own acting careers. 

“I don’t know that people would be as generous as they are, or you wouldn’t get the reach, if you were just a cancer center in Lewiston,” she said. “I think whenever a celebrity can attach their name to an organization like this or a charity, it’s fantastic. It just shows their selflessness. It shows that they’re not just there to be an actor or an actress, they’re people that want to make a difference.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com 

More coverage: Dempsey and the Challenge roll into town this weekend