Sad story, as her fight against a rare form of cancer is about to come to an end:
Alicia Parlette has finally found comfort in her own story.
Parlette, 28, a 2004 University of Nevada, Reno graduate and a promising young journalist has spent the last week saying goodbye to friends and family after a five-year battle with cancer. She is remembered by thousands who read her San Francisco Chronicle series, “Alicia’s story,” a frank first-person account of cancer.
The new copy editor landed what she said was her “dream job” in 2005 at the San Francisco Chronicle when she found out she had a rare form of cancer in her hip, breast and lungs called alveolar soft part sarcoma. She was 23 when her doctor called her at work with the news. The Chronicle’s managing editor then, Robert Rosenthal, approached Parlette about telling her story.
“We knew right from the beginning it wasn’t going to be a happy ending,” he said. “I was asking someone who had this horrible cancer and might not recover, to do this.”
Parlette looked at telling her story as an opportunity to help other people. The paper received thousands of responses to the 17-part series, which Parlette later turned in to a book.
Reno Gazette-Journal