His face was white as ash. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled to walk.
Maria Marquez had just completed 72 hours in quarantine after radiation treatment for thyroid cancer. She took one look at her husband, Leonard Salinas, and knew he needed help.
Salinas, 57, of Oxnard, knew it, too. The longtime Ventura County probation officer drove himself to the emergency room because he worried his wife’s weakened immune system could be exposed to illnesses at the hospital.
Doctors told him he might have pneumonia. They performed scans and found a mass in his lungs. Blood tests and biopsies showed two different kinds of cancer, both stage 4 and spreading.
It was the worst news possible.
“I’ve never seen that before,” said Dr. Karlos Oregel, oncologist at Ventura County Medical Center. “It’s very rare to have two kinds of cancer.”
.Chemotherapy started in days. Two months later, treatment continues with Salinas hoping to start a clinical trial involving experimental therapy.
“My goal is to do away with the cancer,” he said outside his Oxnard condominium, wearing a mask as protection against COVID and other viruses.
He grew up in Oxnard, graduating from Channel Islands High School in 1983. He’s an avid photographer who has shot everything from fashion runways to behind-the-scene images on movie sets.
Friends say he’s easygoing and focuses on the positive. They call him a stabilizing force.
“He’s very calm. He never has anything bad to say about anybody,” said Larry Krogh who has known him for 15 years.
Salinas is on leave from the county probation office where he’s worked for 31 years, most of it focused on helping youth in and outside the juvenile detention facility.
“That’s his passion,” said Mark Varela, the county probation chief who has known him for more than 30 years. “He believes in second chances. He believes in working with youth who have tremendous challenges and are working to get back on the right path.”
He’s a senior deputy probation officer involved in background checks on employees and also on internal affairs investigations. He helped lead a peer support system aimed at helping employees facing issues like stress, illnesses and family problems.
“He’s incredibly positive. He’s one of the warmest human beings you’ll ever meet,” Varela said.
Onslaught of disease
He once worked with Marquez’s brother who was a probation officer. She met Salinas at an Irish pub along with another man who was also interested in her. She picked Salinas because of his charm. Nine years later, he finally proposed.
“He was too chicken to ask me,” she said with a laugh. “My mom said, ‘Marry my daughter or leave.’”
They lived for years in Ventura, moving to Oxnard early in the pandemic. She works as a financial analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice and once planned weddings.
The pandemic has been hard. Salinas lost both of his parents, his mother to cancer and his father to complications from COVID-19.
Marquez was diagnosed five years ago with a thyroid disease that spread to her eyes and required surgery. In May, doctors found a tumor after removing her thyroid gland in another surgery.
The cancer was found early, at stage 1, but doctors told her it was an aggressive form and could return. Marquez is waiting to learn if she needs more radiation.
Sitting on a bench outside the condo, she said her focus is — has to be — on her husband.
“We just have to rally,” she said in a phrase used often.
Leaning on family, friends
The lung cancers have spread to Salinas’ blood and his bones. Marquez cites data that suggests the survival rate for his kind of disease is less than 10%, dismissing the number as soon as she mentioned it.
“If that’s stuck in your mind, that defeats you,” she said.
Every several weeks, Salinas goes to the ICU and sits for 90 minutes three days in a row as drugs are drained into him through a port in his chest. The chemo delivers drugs to shrink the most aggressive cancer. They are paired with immunotherapy medicines designed to help his immune system recognize the cancer so it can fight it.
Salinas has also been accepted into a UCLA clinical trial involving experimental drugs that he said are designed to get rid of the disease. That treatment brings hope, too.
They worry about the uncertainty of their health needs. They are both covered by insurance but are trying to prepare for outside costs in case Salinas needs skilled nursing or other unexpected care. Nearly $15,000 has been donated on the Mighty Cause fundraising website. If money isn’t needed, it will be donated for lung and thyroid cancer research.
They rely on support from family, friends and co-workers. Marquez leans on her mother who provided care for her father. He died of cancer in 2015.
“My mother is my hero,” she said.
Co-workers from the probation office send messages of support as well as gift and grocery cards. Sometimes, they bring soup to the condo.
Salinas said the support helps him stay positive and keeps him from worrying about what could happen.
“If they’re not giving up on me, I’m not giving up on myself,” he said.
For more information, go to https://www.mightycause.com/story/Fightagainstcancer.
Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com or 805-437-0255.
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