Will Power: the name of Joe’s Hood to Coast team. A team that was first formed in 2013 in honor of Joe’s son, Will Krajewski, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer in October 2012 — just months after the boy ran Hood to Coast for the first time.
Four days before team Will Power started out on the course this year, on the morning of Aug. 22, Will lost his fight with cancer. He was 17.
But Will wasn’t recognized only on that dark highway shoulder. “Will Power” was written on the windows of vans carrying runners from other teams. Runners had tributes to the teen inked on their legs.
“Will was everywhere out there,” Joe said.
Father’s footsteps
For years, Will watched his dad run Hood to Coast. He and his mom, Karen Krajewski, would see Joe off at the start line, stop at various check points along the course and meet him at the finish. Will couldn’t wait until he was old enough to run the event.
Finally, in August 2012, Will was 13 years old — the youngest age allowed. He joined his dad’s team and ran the anchor leg, crossing the finish line in Seaside, Ore., for his team. Will loved the experience and planned to run again year after year.
Not long after the event, Will’s left leg started bugging him. In the months leading up to Hood to Coast, Will had run three half marathons and a couple of 10K races. Will and his parents assumed the teen’s body was just tired from all of the running.
But in October 2012, the family learned Will wasn’t just tired, he had osteosarcoma.
Will underwent three months of chemotherapy to attack the tumor in his leg. Then, in January 2013, surgeons removed the top 5 inches of Will’s tibia and replaced it with donor bone. Several infections and bone breaks led to 15 more surgeries in the years that followed.
In June 2013, determined Will had no evidence of disease. Regular CT scans of Will’s chest — osteosarcoma tends to metastasize in the lungs — over the next two and a half years came back clear.
But in December 2015, a routine scan revealed a lesion in Will’s chest, and surgeons removed the lesion.
“Then, all you can do is wait and hope and pray the next time they do a scan nothing comes back,” Karen said. “We didn’t even make it to the initial scan.”
A couple of weeks after the surgery, Will began having issues with his eye. The tumor had returned and was pressing on a nerve connected to his eye. Not only had the original tumor returned, but even more lesions developed. At that point, Will’s cancer was deemed inoperable. Will underwent additional chemotherapy and participated in clinical trials. Nothing worked.
In the months that followed, Will’s health declined as the cancer spread.
“The last two months, it was really fast,” Karen said of the decline. “It was almost daily there was a change.”
As Will’s condition worsened and Hood to Coast approached, Joe wasn’t sure if he would be able to run. But when Will died that Monday morning, Joe knew he had to take the course that Friday.
“There was no way he couldn’t do it,” Karen said. “Will would’ve wanted him to do it.”
Team effort
Team Will Power wasn’t just running in Will’s name, they were also running to raise money for a cause important to the Krajewski family: cancer research. The team raised more than $23,000 — much of it in the days after Will’s death — for the Providence Cancer Center. This was the fourth year the team raised money for cancer-related charities.
This year, the Portland cancer center was the beneficiary of $600,000 raised by Hood to Coast runners. Providence Cancer Center uses the money to fund innovative research, said Dr. Walter Urba, a medical oncologist and director of cancer research at the center.
Much of that research centers around immunotherapy — a form of treatment that uses the human immune system to attack and kill cancer cells.
“I don’t know if I can overstate the importance of these dollars,” Urba said. “The ability of the government to fund medical research has been declining. We’ve been looking for ways to replace those dollars.”
Will participated in an immunology study after his cancer returned, but the drugs weren’t effective. The family, however, did meet others who found success with immunotherapy.
But in order for advancements to be made in immunotherapy and pediatric cancer treatments, more money needs to be raised for research, the Krajewskis said. That’s why team Will Power will be back again next year — and the years after — raising money to fund treatment research and to shine a light on pediatric cancers.
“So little money is given to childhood cancers,” Karen said. “Things aren’t going to change until the kids become important.”
