Robin Swain will walk in her first Relay for Life survivor’s lap this weekend.

The 56-year-old Anacortes resident has been involved in the event from the start but this is the first year she is a cancer survivor.

“Jim (Kight) is personally going to give me my shirt and medallion,” Swain said. “I’ll be sporting purple this year.”

The American Cancer Society’s seventh annual Relay for Life of Anacortes starts at 6 p.m. Friday and continues until 1 p.m. Saturday at the Field of Hope at Seafarers Way and Q Avenue. The theme is “There’s No Place Like Hope.”

Relay for Life is a time to remember those lost to cancer and celebrate those who have survived. It is a night for people to comfort and console one another. It gives people the power to help accelerate the American Cancer Society’s progress toward a future where cancer doesn’t take lives.

Swain got involved in the Skagit County relay in Burlington by accident. She was asked to take a shift — and ended up walking from 2 to 5 a.m.

“Once I got there I was hooked. It was such an emotional, amazing thing,” she said.

Years later, the American Cancer Society approached Swain to help start a relay fundraiser in Anacortes after her long involvement at the county level.

“I was just like bring it on,” she said.

She started looking for volunteers and chaired the new event for its first two years.

“People were just flocking,” she said. “So many people pitched in. It got amazing community support.”

As the years have passed, cancer has become a larger part of her life.

“We had no cancer in my family,” she said.

But in her second year of chairing the event, her sister, a nurse at Island Hospital, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“And then here I come with it,” Swain said.

During a routine mammogram in May, doctors found a lump in her breast. She had a biopsy a week later and the lump was removed within a few weeks.

“It’s all happened so fast,” Swain said.

She is now in her second week of a six-week series of radiation treatments.

“I didn’t think I’d be spending my summer at the hospital’s Cancer Care Center,” Swain said. “I’m glad it was caught early.”

She said she was surprised by the diagnosis — and many other emotions followed.

“I was so diligent in getting my mammograms every year on the dot,” she said. “I was angry. Anger is a secondary emotion. The first one was fear.”

A naturally happy, upbeat person, Swain said she now feels grateful. She has had great support during her ordeal and she said there are many people who are worse off than her.

“I feel I had cancer and now I don’t,” she said.

“It doesn’t change my attitude,” Swain said of now being a cancer survivor. “It just makes me feel extra special.”

This weekend’s relay is a time to remind people that cancer can hit anyone.

“The relay brought a great deal of education — not just to women — to everyone,” she said.

Every year Swain spends the night. It is one way she shows support for the American Cancer Society — what’s it has done, is doing and will do.

“Cancer never sleeps and for that night neither do we,” she said.