The Avon Army of Women isn’t due to be announced on “Oprah” until October, but Drs. Susan Love and Ellen Mahoney already have a battalion of recruiters at the ready in Humboldt County.

Love said the Avon Army seeks a million women ready to be enlisted as volunteer study participants in the battle against cancer. Women shouldn’t need much convincing. The National Cancer Institute estimates 692,000 females will be diagnosed with new cases of cancer this year and 271,530 will die.

The male gender is worse off, with an anticipated 745,180 new cases and 294,120 deaths. But Oprah’s audience is primarily female and Love’s specialty is breast cancer. Her e-Harmony program matching lab researchers with women willing to help them is a start.

Better yet, enlisting doesn’t mean the same commitment as it does to Uncle Sam. It merely opens the door to being part of the solution.

Researchers rely on rats and mice for their early work. Then they need the real deal. Love and Mahoney are no exception. They need 30 women for a study based in Humboldt County.

Love may be the most well-known breast cancer researcher and spokesperson in the country.

Mahoney is the former director of the Level 1 Trauma Center at Stanford University hospital and a local researcher national reputation.

The pair meet regularly in Los Angeles, bouncing ideas off each other as they fly down the carpool lane of the 405 in Love’s convertible.

“All I’m good for is the carpool lane,” Mahoney said. “We go down the road fighting and shouting at the top of our lungs.”

Judging by their reception at Humboldt State University’s Van Duzer Theatre last week, the Humboldt Community Breast Health Project’s faithful will follow the two physicians anywhere they want to go.

“They are two of my heroes,” said Patty Sennott, one of the original Amazon warriors who joined the HCBHP effort 11 years ago.

Three of every four local breast cancer patients make their way to the Humboldt Community Breast Health Project. That’s a 75 percent penetration rate that leaves military recruiters green with envy and Mahoney reasonably certain HCBHP will send her a few of the volunteers she needs.

HCBHP does it with 2.5 paid staff positions, a dozen volunteers and no need to recruit from the high schools. Since its start, 23,000 people have turned to the HCBHP for information support and hope.

“I saw (HCBHP) on a card in my doctor’s office,” recalled Sandie LeBlanc, who labeled herself a new survivor of breast cancer. Panic, confusion, anger and, most notably, fear swirled as the news every woman dreads reverberated to her core last year.

“I picked up the card, then the phone. The first place I hit was the fuzzy line.”

Warm-line volunteers, all of whom heard the same breast cancer diagnosis at some time in their lives, answer the phone from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. They are a sisterhood created by a shared disease, a source of hope that comes from talking with someone who has been to that particular hell, held it together and cares enough to help someone else get through the journey.

“It was the safest place I could go,” LeBlanc recalled. “The information was fabulous — very current. I could have a total meltdown and feel safe. It’s like the womb. I felt not so scared anymore.”

Mahoney and Love would like to take that fear away, permanently.

“You always hear about a search for a cure,” said Dr. Julie Ohnemus, a breast cancer survivor and founder of the HCBHP. “This (study) is a step beyond. We have pioneering women in Humboldt County. This could put us on the map.”

Watching Humboldt County make it on YouTube or into the New York Times for something other than grow houses and marijuana would make my day.

Given that I don’t have a breast cancer diagnosis and hope never to have one, I can’t help Mahoney and Love directly.

But I can keep the study in mind and put it in yours. We can tell others and weigh its value now, before someone we know becomes one of the anticipated 25 women in Humboldt County in the next year who will be diagnosed by a core biopsy with ductal carcinoma in situ.

It’s hard to volunteer for a study in the midst of emotional turmoil, so embrace the power of making decisions before the you-know-what hits the fan.

Use air travel as an example. My assumption’s been that anyone who could move after the crash landing of a plane would stampede to the emergency exit. That would have favored me more 25 years ago than it does now.

Turns out many sit with a blank look, unable to get their minds around what just happened. Those who react seem to be the ones who map their course and prepare their minds for the awful reality rather than turn a deaf ear to the safety video and attendant. My safety card is well read.

A breast cancer diagnosis isn’t anything anyone wants to deal with, either, but enlisting in an army to fight it and knowing where to find help are something to keep in mind. The HCBHP is located at 987 Eighth St. in Arcata and can be phoned at 707-825-8345.

(Opinions expressed in columns are not necessarily those of The Eureka Reporter or its staff.)