Pat Alfaro, the chef at Plymouth Village in Redlands, Calif., has a gift for making the ordinary – well, extraordinary. He can carve a fish from a block of ice and slice fruit into flowers. But even Alfaro’s ingenuity was challenged by a situation he faced in June.

Our videotaping was memorable and meaningful because of the intergenerational input. Our youngest pink glove dancer being 6 years old and dancing for her Great-grandma, a cancer survivor and our oldest dancer, being in her 90’s, who knows the affects that breast cancer has had on so many over the course of her life. We shared our stories of those diagnosed and treated, and I’m sure as we went home the day of our taping, some of us felt a bit of sadness that we had lost someone we cherished. For those of us who were able to participate, the honor will never be forgotten. For our loved ones and friends who lost their battle with breast cancer, we danced in their memory.

Mary Balsley had just stepped into a local elementary school class to read a Dr. Seuss book when she realized she had entered a world much different from her own at Plymouth Village in Redlands, California. All the faces in the audience were painted with Cat-in-the-Hat whiskers. “Well, I can’t read in this room,” she announced to the surprised youngsters at Highland Grove Elementary School. “I don’t have any whiskers.”