There’s a moment Andrew Dale remembers with terrible clarity. He was at 140 pounds, down from 190. His hair was gone. He could barely get out of bed after months of chemotherapy. His six-year-old daughter, Zoe, came home from school.
“Daddy, I don’t want you to die,” she said.
Andrew had been living for himself: head down, fighting, refusing to believe he wouldn’t survive. That moment shattered him and made him realize his fight wasn’t just about him anymore. It was about showing his daughter he was still here. The next day, he forced himself up. He wheeled himself out of bed, gripped the banister on the staircase and made it to the front door.
When Zoe walked in from school, he was waiting: “Hey, how was your day?” For a split second, she saw joy in his eyes. She saw normal.
Then he had to climb back upstairs and collapse into bed. That ten-minute conversation cost him three hours of recovery. And it was worth every minute. Andrew described Zoe as his “second wind” and what kept him fighting.
Andrew was diagnosed with lymphoma at 45. He’d been an athlete in college, a cyclist, always moving. For months, he ignored symptoms and just thought he was celiac.
And when the CT scan and doctor came back with “great news, it’s lymphoma,” he thought: how is that great news? It was great news because research existed. Because pathways existed. Because immunotherapy (treatments that didn’t exist 20 years ago) had advanced to the point where it could save his life.
When chemo stopped working, immunotherapy took over and Andrew survived.
Now he’s in remission. He sees his oncologist every six months. He’s obsessed with his health metrics, the “annoying” guy checking recovery scores on his phone. He’s also on the board of Blood Cancer United, an organization he found while recovering that helps cancer patients and families and funds research to find cures.
He set a goal: a hundred-mile bike ride. It took three years but in 2019 he cycled all the way around Lake Tahoe. It wasn’t just about beating cancer anymore. It was about making a difference. Ensuring that today’s patients could become tomorrow’s survivors.
That’s why California’s Proposition 38 matters to him. When Zoe was six, she didn’t understand cancer but she felt the weight of it as time went on. She felt the community stepping in: friends picking her up from school or a meal train feeding her family.
She learned what resilience and strength were. What love looked like when a family pulls together instead of falling apart. Now she’s studying political science at Tulane and about to vote in her first election. And she sees Proposition 38 not as a cost, but as a choice.
“We’re in a world right now that is a little scary,” she said. “But we as young adults and as the future generation have the power to do something about it. That starts here.”
She thinks about her friends. Most of them haven’t walked into their house to see their dance teacher sitting there with news of a parent’s cancer diagnosis. She hopes they never have to. But without medical research funding, without continuity, without the ability to treat patients amid breakthrough work, that risk remains real.
Proposition 38 would fund immunology research to prevent and cure cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease at California’s nonprofit universities and research institutions. Half the funds, about $4.2 billion, would go directly to these three diseases alone. The measure includes 2% administrative costs, independent audits, conflict-of-interest rules and public disclosure. Ten percent of licensing proceeds return to the state to help offset bond costs. It’s designed to pay for itself.
Andrew’s point was simple: Can you put a price tag on a life? On a thousand lives? What if it was you? The answer the Dale family came to after remission, recovery and years of advocacy is that it isn’t a choice at all. It’s an obligation.
Vote YES on Proposition 38. Learn more at YESon38.com.