‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ helps cancer patients

Question: Can you discuss City of Hope and your role with it?

Stanger: I partnered with City of Hope to raise money for them. I’m also getting involved with them through radio and other different events and avenues. I’m really a believer in it. My father died of lung cancer, and my mother’s two best friends died of breast cancer. City of Hope is like the new model of cancer centers. It not only takes you in and gives you the cutting-edge drugs and gets you to the right doctors, but also gives a place for the entire family to find solace. 

They also find you the best home care as well as the best place to reside. They’re committed to working diligently to hasten new protocols, new treatment and new hope. They’re finding more and more people are getting cancer today than ever before. Whether its melanoma, lung cancer, prostate, breast cancer — it’s become an epidemic and it hits every single demographic in the world, so they really are becoming the cutting edge of research.

Q: Have you had a moving experience with City of Hope that you’d like to share?

Stanger: I just got involved with them. I was looking for a charity when my dad died of lung cancer last year that I felt that I could do the best in positioning myself in the community.

I’ve been dealing with people that are bald who have lost their hair through radiation; women, you know how hard that is for them? And then they get better and they go through remission and you know their hair doesn’t grow as fast. I’ve had to find them wigs and extensions and then I’ve had to do makeovers on them, especially if they have had lumpectomies. Then at the same time I had to find them people to be fixed up with. A lot of times, I’ll fix up a person who has experiences that are the same as another person, like they’ve both gone through the cancer experience.

I’ve personally had a lump scare about three or four years ago with my first mammogram. They found a cyst and I was terrified. I thought, “Oh my god, they’re going to take my breast off.” It was the most terrifying experience I ever went through. I don’t think I went to great doctors because they didn’t have any bedside manners. What I saw with what I went through, knowing what Christina Applegate has gone through, you know, I can’t even imagine that. So that’s why I’m out there wanting to make sure we get the best treatment possible.

Q: Of all the cancer charities out there, why should people support City of Hope?

Stanger: I think it's because it’s the leading biomedical research and treatment center for cancer and diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. For more than 90 years, City of Hope has pioneered scientific breakthroughs and their treatments for patients have brought us one step closer to curing the most devastating of diseases. In other words, they’ve been around the longest. They’ve had the most connections. They’re doing the cutting-edge research. They’re not listening to just what the government says.

I think that there are some cures out there. And I think because of the drug companies, the way they’re set up, people don’t want to find a cure sometimes. I really believe that. These people [City of Hope] care more about people than care about making money.

Q: I had never heard of another charity before that really works with the cancer patients’ family and friends.

Stanger: They don’t want you to be ostracized and left out of the experience because a lot of times when people get cancer they feel shamed. Then, they hold it inside and the only person that really gets the brunt is maybe the husband or the spouse, or even if it’s a lover, like in a gay community. Then what happens is the rest of the family — the grandparents, the children, the sister, the brother — they’re shut out and its because they feel embarrassed. Why should someone feel embarrassed that they got sick?

The City of Hope includes them in the process, and wants them to be ready for the protocol. If there’s treatments, you need people to take you for your chemo, you need someone to take you to the doctors' visits. Sometimes a sole provider in the family can’t always be available, so if the family is well-versed with the concepts and the procedures, they can help them more.

Q: What are you doing professionally now and charity-wise?

Stanger: I am giving 5 percent of my proceeds on each member that buys my membership to City of Hope. I am also doing the same thing with my book. Every time you buy a book, I want some of those proceeds to go to charity. I’m taking my cut, my personal cut, not Simon Schuster’s cut, and I’m putting it toward charity. I’m also involved with adoption. I’m adopted, so I’m trying to find one national charity to platform out there.

In Florida when I worked for Great Expectations, I worked for a year and half with kids in distress. There came a point where I wanted to adopt all the kids, and these kids were the last resort. They’ve been abused, sexually molested, and at a certain point after the kid has gone through every single legal process to get the parent back, and the parent abandons them, they get assigned to a real family, which they call the permanent mommy and daddy. It was the saddest experience I ever went through. I thought, why do they have to go through this?  Once the parent revokes the right, they should be taken away. Stop reuniting them with bad parents.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Stanger: Well, I do believe that anything can happen in life on a dime. I do believe you can get miraculously cured. I do believe (that) if you believe it will happen. But I really talk about it in my book, "Become Your Own Matchmaker," which I’m trying to go out to college campuses with my book. This is what I want: My movement is not a charity, my movement is to set the record straight, and help the younger girls and boys in the community learn how to court each other and date. The art of courtship has gone away, so I’m going on a college campus tour this summer, and teaching girls not to hook up, to basically let the guy ask you out, even if it’s for Domino’s pizza and a beer. The minute you sleep with them, and the oxytocins bond and chemicals surge through your body, you’re going to be bonded to a loser, especially if he doesn’t treat you right.

Interviewed by Jessica Abramson, NBC News

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