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Running Strong And Brave
Maria Carrillo's Leanne Fogg found the courage to run
again after enduring Graves' disease, brother's death

By ERIC BRANCH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Not long ago, before Leanne Fogg became intimate with adversity and grief, she was more
talented than tenacious.

As a precocious distance runner at Maria Carrillo High, Fogg didn’t push the pace. She
didn’t take chances. She didn’t welcome the pain. She ran for personal-best times, not
victories. Her coach, Dan Aldridge, puts it like this: She ran, but didn’t race.

But things are much different today.

A few weeks ago, Fogg, 18, a senior, was sitting down on campus, her back resting against
a brick wall, her gaze fixed straight ahead.

About 20 yards in front of her was the school’s football field. It is ringed by the track,
the place doctors once told her, when she was a 16-year-old diagnosed with Graves’
disease, that she would never again run in the front of the pack.

On the hillside overlooking the track, visible from where she sat, was a heart with the
initials G.F. carved into the earth.

It is a tribute to her only sibling, Garrett, who died last July at the age of 15 after a
seven-week battle with bacterial meningitis. It has been enough to overwhelm anyone, let
alone a teenager navigating her way through high school. And, honestly, Fogg hardly looks
cut out for this role.

She stands 5-foot-4 and weighs 114 pounds. She stopped playing soccer a few years ago after
her second broken arm. She was too fragile, she figured. She has long, curly brown hair and
a smile you remember. Friends describe her as “sweet.”

Then there is this.

She has coldcocked Graves’ disease. She has defied her doctors’ gloomy predictions. She has
attended her brother’s funeral and since sat alone in his room and wept at his gravesite.
She was recently named prom queen, an expression of admiration from peers who’ve seen her
remain upright through tragedy.

She has been through hell and, as a result, she now runs with the same courage she’s
displayed off the track. She is a racer.

On Saturday, she will compete in the finals of the 1,600 and 3,200 meters at the North Coast
Section Meet of Champions at Cal, a meet that sends the top four finishers in each event to
the CIF State Track and Field Championships.

Last year, Fogg, with Garrett in the intensive care unit at UCSF Children’s Hospital,
finished fifth in the 3,200 after running third for most of the race.

She has since accomplished nearly all of her running goals — earning a partial scholarship
to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and finishing among the top 10 at the state cross-country meet.

A trip to the most prestigious, talent-filled state track meet in the country is the only
uncrossed item left on her list.

“At this point, I’m just like, ‘You know what, life? Just bring it on. Just try me,’” Fogg
said. “I’ve been through losing my brother and having struggles with my running. My parents
have lost their own son and people say that is the worst loss ever. I feel permanently hurt
by that. But I feel stronger now, too. I feel like I can handle anything.”

RUNNING IN QUICKSAND

The daughter of Greg and Lisa Fogg, former distance runners who met while competing at the
University of Alabama, Fogg is blessed with good genes.

That was obvious when she entered high school.

As a freshman, she was an All-Empire selection in cross country, a debut that set the stage
for a breakout season. As a sophomore, she was a top runner on a cross country team that was
ranked No. 1 in the state in Division III for much of the season. She was the top Empire
finisher at the North Coast Section and state finals, finishing second and 11th,
respectively.

But during workouts before the track season, she began slowing down. Sometimes she threw up
after runs. And then at the National Scholastic Indoor Championships at New York in March,
it felt like she was being choked as she ran. To others, it was bizarre. The sensational
sophomore was running in quicksand.

"In New York, that's when we all knew something was wrong," said Kristen Sanzari, Fogg's
teammate since middle school.

Fogg stopped running. And made a series of trips to UC Davis and Stanford medical centers.
There were initially few answers.

She saw a heart specialist and was given heart medication. She was given inhalers for
asthma. She was told she might have a collapsed lung.

Fogg had shortness of breath. A rapid heart rate. Muscle fatigue. Her skin was dry, her
fingernails were brittle and clumps of hair began falling out in the shower.

During a trip to the mall, her mom had to help her walk back to the parking lot. As she
wrapped her arm around her daughter's waist, she realized how much weight Leanne had lost.

Finally, after about two months, there was a diagnosis: Graves' disease. Her thyroid gland
was producing more thyroid hormones than her body needed, speeding up her metabolism and
leading to her various side effects.

She swallowed a radioactive iodine pill at UC Davis to kill off her thyroid. She now takes
a hormone supplement pill daily and has periodic blood tests.

If a long-awaited diagnosis was a relief, the doctors' warnings, and the long road back,
were ominous.

She was told she would be able to run again. But not at the same level. At 16, her glory
days were behind her. Running in college? That dream had evaporated.

For several months, there was no evidence to dispute such notions. Fogg's attempted
comeback was more heartbreaking than heroic.

Greg Fogg, an assistant track coach at Maria Carrillo, was stunned by his daughter's
decline. She could run at a nine-minute-per-mile pace, below junior varsity standards,
for only 20 minutes. Her breathing was labored, like she was a two-pack-a-day smoker.
Greg went home and told his wife. The two former college runners had modest expectations.

"It would have been an awesome story if she was just able to come back and make the
varsity team," Greg Fogg said. "That would have been a great accomplishment."

For her part, Leanne was initially scared by her prognosis. Then she digested it. And got
angry. It marked the first step in her move from runner to racer.

"I started really getting vicious and competitive after coming back from Graves' disease,"
Fogg said. "Especially with them telling me I would never run again, at least not at the
same level."

Fogg's attitude wasn't surprising. A 4.0 student, she has never accepted mediocrity or,
really, anything less than excellence.

Lisa Fogg remembers how her daughter approached school projects with an almost troubling

intensity.

"No compliment could ever be enough," Lisa said. "'Are you sure it's OK?' she'd ask.
'Leanne, it's all right. It's all right,' we'd tell her. She'd pour so much of herself
into an assignment. To us it was just an assignment. But Leanne cares about the things she
creates. She cares what people see."

And, sure enough, Fogg aced Graves' disease like it was some report on the Revolutionary
War.

'IT'S OK NOT TO BE OK'

At her first event back, a cross country meet at Rancho Cotate in the fall of her junior
year, she finished in the top 10, an unexpected result. She also suffered a stress
fracture in a toe at the meet and was sidelined for nearly two months.

Whatever. She'd proved a point. She wouldn't be running in the middle of the pack. She
finished the cross-country season on the all-league team. During track season a few months
later, she had the Empire's top time in the 3,200 and ranked second in the 1,600.

She won the 3,200 at the North Bay League championships, the first step toward the state
meet. She went to the prom the next night.

The following day, May 14, a Sunday, Mother's Day, Garrett Fogg, who had been dealing with
recent headaches, suffered a stroke in front of his parents at home.

By the evening, he was at UCSF Children's Hospital, where he stayed in intensive care for
48 days until his death July 1. He had six surgeries. He occasionally made eye contact with
his parents and Leanne, but never spoke a word.

During their son's struggle, Lisa and Greg stayed in San Francisco. Leanne stayed at the
home of one her best friends, Michaela Baer. Her parents tried to protect Leanne, shielding
her from the worst news during a cruel roller-coaster ride that had them talking of rehab
centers one day and listening as a doctor told them to prepare to say goodbye to their son
the next.

Leanne would visit when Garrett looked better. When the swelling went down after his latest
surgery. When there was hope. She was in the midst of taking the SAT, final exams and trying
to survive track and field's postseason.

She somehow managed to hold herself together. But sometimes Michaela wished her friend could
just fall apart.

"With most people in that situation you'd say to them 'Stay strong' or 'Hang in there,' "
Michaela said. "But with Leanne you'd have to remind her that it's OK not to be strong.
It's OK not to be OK.'"

But Leanne found an outlet in Michaela's mom.

Sharon Baer would stay up late, after Michaela and Leanne had finished their homework, to
talk with them when Leanne was in a less-guarded, more-reflective mood.

She watched as Leanne braced herself for the school day and then saw how she almost visibly
exhaled, softening when she came back to the Baer's house.

At times, Leanne would finish her homework before Michaela and sit on Sharon's lap, content
to be silently held. One night at the dinner table, a tear fell down Leanne's cheek. Sharon
quietly took her outside on the deck, away from the family, and held Leanne as she sobbed
in her arms.

"To this day I marvel at Leanne's courage and grace, and how she dealt with all that,"
Sharon said. "There were days you could tell that she dug deep within herself to get through
the day."

A BRACELET THAT NEVER COMES OFF

Less than a year after Garrett's death, Leanne has had grief counseling. She has expressed
her pain through poetry and read books designed to help manage her grief.

Garrett and Leanne were separated by 20 months and grew up as constant companions. But by
the time they were attending high school together, they had developed their own identities.
Garrett was a star runner in middle school, but stopped, Greg believes, because Leanne was
already excelling at the sport.

Instead he played soccer, wrestled and pole vaulted on the track team. The pole vault was
a natural for Garrett, a risk taker who loved mountain biking, skateboarding, snowboarding
and basically anything that involved falling and getting back up.

Leanne was famously disciplined about her training and homework while Garrett, naturally
smart, was just an OK student and grew weary of soccer drills.

Everything seemingly came easily to him. Particularly friendships.

At his funeral, a crowd stood outside St. Eugene's Cathedral for a service that was
described as life-changing. The soccer team dedicated their season to him. So did the
wrestling team. So did Rincon Valley Little League. A bench has been dedicated in his
honor. His initials remain etched on the hillside. A recent visitor to Calvary Catholic
Cemetery asked a receptionist in the office where Garrett Fogg's gravesite was located.
A middle-aged woman suddenly appeared and gave step-by-step directions. "Garrett," she
explained with a sad smile, "gets lots of visitors."

When Leanne talks about her little brother, she does so with tears in her eyes. She talks
slowly, haltingly, trying to keep sniffles from becoming sobs. Her voice cracks when she
recalls the difficulty of returning to the track, running by the pole vault pit where her
dad still coaches, without his son.

On her right wrist, she wears two plastic bracelets in his memory, one from UCSF Children's
Hospital and another that reads "Remember Garrett." She wears them to bed. And keeps them
on in the shower. Around her neck is a charm necklace with an impression of Garrett's thumb.
She unclasps it before races and hands it to her dad, who then wears it as he watches
Leanne run.

And from Greg and Lisa Fogg's perspective, there is no mistaking the difference in their
daughter during her senior season.

"It was this year," said Lisa, "that I first saw her grit her teeth and go for it."

In the fall, at the league cross country championships, Leanne won the NBL title. It was
the first cross country victory of her career. She won by eight seconds. She then finished
eighth at the state cross country meet, earning a long-awaited top-10 finish.

At this weekend's Meet of Champions, she is seeded third in the 1,600 and fourth in the
3,200, needing top-four finishes in either event to finally reach state.

There are no guarantees.

But there is one certainty.

Racing in events defined by pain and perseverance, Leanne Fogg will embrace the suffering,
digging deep down to summon strength she once didn't know existed.

You can reach Staff Writer Eric Branch at 521-5268 or eric.branch@pressdemocrat.com.

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