OCEAN CITY — The Pink Clover Foundation, which supports breast cancer patients, provides education and helps fund research, is named after Colleen Sorbello of Ocean City, who battled cancer for four years before succumbing in 2017.
The charitable foundation held its annual gala Sept. 30 at the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City.
Sam Sorbello said the foundation started after his late wife, Colleen, passed away in September 2017. He said a group of family and friends got together and had their first event in January 2018.
“It was a small event, but that was the kickoff to this foundation,” he said. “Since that point, we have grown tremendously.”
The foundation has held large fundraisers including golf tournaments and the gala, and little ones including football games at the University of New Haven (Conn.) and a couple of high school games.
“We raise awareness and money,” he said.
Sorbello is chairman of the eight-member board of trustees of the Colleen Sorbello Breast Cancer Foundation, which does business as the Pink Clover Foundation.
The football fundraiser is at the University of New Haven because it is home to the Colleen Sorbello Research Laboratory.
The foundation supports the laboratory and the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia.
Sorbello attended the university and played football there in the early 1980s.
In 2015, he and Colleen went there for the first football fundraiser. The foundation does that every year, including on Oct. 7, the weekend after the Ocean City gala.
He said he doesn’t remember how it came about, but he and Colleen had a meeting with the cancer research lab at the university while she was undergoing treatment.
“She was so impressed with the way things were presented to us at the meeting that she said she really wanted to do something with the lab. I really want to be partners with it somehow,” Sorbello said. “When she did pass, I made a gift to the lab to honor her name and they named the lab after her. They do a lot of good breast cancer research.”
He noted what is good about the lab is that it isn’t regulated by the government or linked to a pharmaceutical company that is “breathing down their back. It is just pure research and they have liberties to do what they think.”
This year was the second in a row that the gala was held at the Flanders Hotel, which he called “a great venue.”
Sorbello said they had guests and sponsors flying in from all over the country to attend the gala and support the foundation. “The sponsors donate a lot of money to us; we’re very fortunate to have those relationships,” he said.
Research is one part of what the foundation funds. The other two parts are providing education and comfort.
The education aspect includes a community outreach lecture series that connects the foundation to residents of southern New Jersey with seminars and information about detection, treatment, support programs and guidance on insurance assistance. Keynote speakers are from two of the foundation’s partners, AtlantiCare and Inspire Health Network.
The comfort aspect provides financial grants to cancer patients while offering “moral, spiritual and social support.” That is supported by the hospital partners, including Penn Medicine. Pink Clover also donates goodie bags to women while they are undergoing treatment and they provide financial help with their essential expenses.
“The number one thing we do is the word comfort,” Sorbello said. “We provide grants to individuals.” At the gala, the foundation honored four women and gave each a grant of $2,500.
“It’s not like we give them a check and say goodbye to them. They become part of our family,” he said. “We have stayed in touch with the majority (of honorees) since the inception six years ago.”
He noted the first recipient, Valerie Roland, is from Ocean City.
“She is still part of our family, our network,” Sorbello said. “We love her.”
That feeling appears to be mutual.
“When you find yourself reeling from a diagnosis, grasping the reality; the one that carved life into two halves — before cancer and after cancer — floundering in the dark, praying for a pinhole for a glimpse of light — the Pink Clover Foundation is that light, and not a tiny ray but the sun of a perfect beach day, glittering the waves,” Roland wrote to the foundation. “I call it hope — Pink Clover is hope — when it’s all coming down around you, (because that’s the cruelty of cancer — no part of life is exempt) unexpectedly … caring, loving arms find you, pull you in — and stay with you — they are family — forever grateful for my family — truly, life would not look the same without them. God Bless.”
To date, the foundation has provided grants to about 45 recipients.
Pink Clover also provides money — generally about $5,000 a quarter — to an oncology fund at the partner hospitals, which also includes Thomas Jefferson, to help patients who may be struggling with their bills.
Cancer interrupts
20-year marriage
Sam and Colleen were married for 20 years. In 2013, she discovered a lump on her breast. The first diagnosis was breast cancer.
“That was hard enough,” Sorbello said, “but after further testing it was discovered it had already metastasized and moved into her liver.”
She was treated at Penn Medicine for three and half years and had gone through three or four chemotherapy treatments and some trials, but over time she couldn’t handle the potent medication.
“Penn just said, ‘We’re out of ammunition,’” he said.
They then went to MD Anderson in Houston, Texas from May through July 2017, then came back home. Colleen lost the battle in September of that year.
Sorbello said it was tough at the time and he relives it with the patients the foundation is helping now.
“But I’ll also tell you, these girls are unbelievable. They’re fighters, they have a great attitude. They don’t quit, they keep fighting,” he said. “And some of these girls are in their mid-30s, they have two or three children and they’re at stage four cancer.”
Homegrown organization, thrift story on Asbury
“We’re homegrown here in Ocean City. This is Pink Clover’s headquarters,” Sorbello said.
He is remarried — his wife’s name is Cyndi — and they have a thrift store at 754 Asbury Ave. called Bastazo Thrift & Coffee that supports all cancer research.
“One hundred percent of what she does at the store, the net proceeds, goes to cancer,” Sorbello said.
He said sales have grown over the past three years and the donations that come in are “unbelievable.”
“I really believe God is calling us to do this now,” he said. “It’s who we are and what we’re supposed to be at this point in our lives.”
Sorbello noted that while the organization has major sponsors, it is still working on the smaller individual donations.
Visit pinkcloverfoundation.org to donate to the foundation.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff