The color blue and butterflies always make Jamie Cooper Moales think of her late sister, Sara Elizabeth Cooper.
She tears up talking about her. “You would think after 21 years, it would be easier. But it isn't always,” Moales said. “Sara was super friendly and wanted to make everybody feel special.”
They were both into softball and volleyball and played instruments in the marching band. “She was outgoing and everyone's best friend. I was the studious and nerdy one,” Moales said.
In 1999, when Sara was 16, she came to Duke for a biopsy and was diagnosed Jamie Cooper pullquotewith non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. After responding well to the first round of treatments, her cancer soon relapsed. Additional chemotherapy failed, so she had a stem cell transplant at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, where she spent her 17th birthday.