OCTOBER 2017 14 | FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM Fighting For Yourself Talk to people. That’s Schnitzer’s advice to survivors. After her diagnosis and treatment, she would give talks to the Jewish community and as a result, two women discovered they, too, had breast cancer. “Be open about it. Talk to people about it. You don’t know what comes from that,” she said. Her mother-in-law, who had been diagnosed years before Schnitzer and her sister-in-law, recently had a recurrence. She caught it very early, through a mammogram, and is doing fine. “The message is early detection, no matter what cancer you get,” she said. “You’re your own advocate. Doctors see hundreds of patients. They don’t know you intimately. They don’t know you. You don’t feel good and you feel you need further research on what’s happening? Then you need to speak up for yourself. Even if a doctor says, ‘Oh, it’s probably nothing, your bloodwork looks good,’ you have to advocate for yourself because early detection in anything is important.” Through it all, Schnitzer’s husband, Kenneth, who is co-owner and CEO of the Luci’s enterprise, was a “bulldog,” she said. “He just goes right in there and he makes his presence known and he was my biggest cheerleader and he made sure he was at every appointment. He was also advocating for me. He fought every step that I fought. He fought alongside me making sure that medically I was taken care of.” Building a Business The idea of Luci’s Healthy Marketplace came to Kenneth Schnitzer while Lucia was going through treatment for her breast cancer. Together, they built the business from the ground up. “It was hard for him to stand by idle watching me go through this, losing my hair, getting weak,” Schnitzer said. “But he said that he got strength by watching me because it didn’t stop me. And he was so confused – how is it that my healthy wife is battling this? She didn’t do drugs, she’s not a heavy drinker, she took care of herself, no family history. What is going on here?” Kenneth Schnitzer, who has family roots in the food distribution industry, realized that he and his wife may never know what COVER STORY CONTINUED “The message is early detection, no matter what cancer you get. You’re your own advocate."

OCTOBER 2017 FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM | 15 2017: Lucia and husband, Kenneth Schnitzer 2017: Lucia and daughter, Avivia, after their first 5k together