Benefit walk supports man battling cancer

More than 200 relatives, friends and community members showed up at Arthur J. Hendrickson Park on Sunday to walk in support of Joe Verrelli, the village worker who is fighting Stage 4 cancer.

“Unfortunately, Joe is battling some very severe side effects, and he couldn’t make it today,” said Verrelli’s fiance, Meagan Robar. She thanked the crowd on his behalf, as he was home with a high fever and coping with pain throughout his body following a recent treatment.

The couple’s plight attracted regional media attention in late March as they attempted to raise money for a clinical trial treatment recommended by Verrelli’s doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The hospital agreed to pay for half of the $240,000 treatment, but Verrelli’s insurance company, EmblemHealth, denied coverage of the other half days before it was to begin.

Robar set up a GoFundMe fundraising page on March 27, which hit its $120,000 goal in less than five days. The goal was raised to $130,000 to account for the website’s 8 percent fee, and the campaign was closed with a total of $132,394 in donations.

“The overwhelming amount of love and support sparked a new side of Joe,” said Robar, 29, her voice wavering at times. “For the first time in months, I saw his strength and determination renewed. Now he is not only fighting for himself, not only fighting for me and his family — he is fighting for all of you. Your love has shifted his mindset. We will not surrender to this disease.”

Verrelli’s mother, Rita, lost her sister to leukemia and her father to stomach cancer. When she talks about her 32-year-old son’s condition, she fights back tears and recovers a positive tone in the same breath. “It just breaks a mother’s heart,” she said. “It shouldn’t have been, not to someone who’s so loving.”

Rita remembered when she heard her son’s diagnosis. She was alone in the hospital after a knee surgery. She cried, and still cries every night, she said. She fights to remain positive, and said the support from online donors and from friends who have emerged “from the woodwork,” some of whom only remember her son from childhood, is where she is finding hope.

A major source of strength for her is Robar, who noticed an irregular mole near Verrelli’s collarbone in March 2014. A biopsy revealed that he had malignant melanoma, which set him on a treatment path that evolved as his diagnosis became more severe.

“Meagan is getting me through,” Rita said. “If she didn’t come in his life, he just wouldn’t be here, number one, and he wouldn’t be so happy… He knows that through her, he’s going to live, and he’s going to make it.”

Verrelli proposed to Robar, his girlfriend of four years, on May 6, at a private spot in Hendrickson Park that the couple likes for its view. The move caught her by surprise, Robar said. “I didn’t think, with everything on his mind, that he was thinking of that,” she said.

She has good and bad days as she tries to prepare for a future that is so uncertain. She finds silver linings — the word of doctors that Verrelli’s harsh side effects are evidence that his treatments are having an effect; the engagement in the midst of their turmoil. It will be more than a month before they can assess how he is responding to the drugs.

Donations of $10 per head were asked of the walk’s participants, to help defray Verrelli’s costs. His long-term treatments could end up costing as much as $1 million, according to his mother, who said each trip to Sloan Kettering in Manhattan can reach $100 just to cover transportation and food. EmblemHealth reversed its decision in April following media coverage and agreed to pay for the remaining half of the current treatment, but the financial burden could grow depending on how Verrelli responds.

Timmy Graham, a Department of Public Works employee, said that a number of village employees turned out for the walk. He said that Verrelli has a reputation as a “humble guy.” Graham only recently found out about Verrelli’s disease, and was surprised to learn it about a person he’d seen “out there working, and always with a smile.”

Lorraine Werbeck, one of Verrelli’s supervisors at the Parks Department, helped organize the event. She said that her department, and every other one in the village, “from the top down,” had pledged full support for someone she called “one of the most popular guys in the department,” an employee with enough charisma that his coworkers would jockey to be assigned to his work detail. She said that more fundraisers could be planned if the need arises.

As Robar and Verrelli continue their fight, Robar said she hopes their experience will inspire others to take melanoma screenings seriously. “May is Melanoma Awareness Month. Please, please, please get checked,” she told the crowd at the park. “Make an appointment with your local dermatologist. It takes 10 minutes to get a body scan, and it can save your life.”