Community Corner
'Team Heather' Stays Strong at 2013 Riverview Relay For Life
Heather Creek is remembered for her courageous 13-year fight with four cancer battles. Her friends and family locally are joined by relatives and friends from Ohio at the annual Riverview Relay For Life at Riverview High School.
Marv Creek was married to Heather Creek for 41 years, and it's her 13-year fight with four cancer battles that brings him, relatives and friends to the Riverveiw Relay For Life, where they walk to remember as "Team Heather."
"Who was Heather Creek? She was my best friend," said Barbara Jones Keplinger, who met Creek when the two women worked at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. "Who is she now? She's my guardian angel."
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At the 2013 Riverveiw Relay For Life, Keplinger joined her husband, her grandchildren, Marv Creek and his daughter and grandchildren, and other friends and family members who walked in memory of Heather at Riveriew High School.
Keplinger said she met Creek, who was "my major's secretary," with the sheriff's office's District 4, which covers Riverview, Lithia, Ruskin, Sun City, Apollo Beach, Gibsonton, Progress Village and the south part of Brandon.
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Creek was diagnosed with first diagnosed with cancer, with breast cancer, in 1998. She subsequently battled pancreas and stomach cancer and then, again, pancreatic cancer, which claimed her life.
She died Feb. 28, 2011, days before that year's Riverview Relay For Life, which she had planned to attend.
"She's watching and the's pround," Creek's husband said. "She was my best friend for 41 years. She married a crazy guy and she dealt with it."
The Creeks grew up and met in Ohio, where they also raised their family before moving to Apollo Beach. After Creek died, 20 of the kids who grew up with the Creek kids traveled to Riverview to walk at the relay.
For a third year this year, Creek's daughter, Nicole, 41, has returned to Riverview to walk.
"I just hope my mom's looking down, happy that we're here," she said, with her daughters, and Creek's granchildren, Zoe, 11, and Kya, 9, looking on.
"My mother's mother died from cancer when she was 23," Nicole added. "Cancer is a bad word in my family. Some day we're not going to have to worry about it. Hopefully, by the time my kids are old enough we won't have to worry about it."
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RELATED COVERAGE:
- 2013 Relays For Life at Riverview and Newsome High Schools
- FishHawk Creek MOMS Club Relays For Life at Newsome High
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