Taking a different track

A chance meeting at Costa Mesa’s first Relay for Life cancer walk in 2007 changed the life of Shadow Lane.

Lane, then a sophomore at Newport Harbor High School, had lost his younger brother to bone cancer a few years earlier and was taken to the event by a classmate who had just lost his father to throat cancer.

The two walked around the OCC track for 16 straight hours, through the night.

“Once it started getting hard to walk we felt more and more that that’s what we should be doing, staying on the track even though it was hard,” Lane said.

He and his friend paused briefly during the night to give testimonials of their tragic tales of loss on a makeshift sound stage set up for just that purpose beside the track. Lane’s story caught the ear of Bob Nanney, the principal of Orange Coast Middle College High School, an alternative school with a student body of only 82 kids who take community college courses along with their regular studies and are encouraged to learn real-world skills.

Nanney had just found out he had prostate cancer less than a year earlier.

The two met and parted ways. The next week, a counselor at Middle College High School brought a “borderline” application into Nanney’s office, asking whether the student should be admitted to the specialty school.

The application was from Lane, who had been sliding by with subpar grades at Newport Harbor and wanted to give the much smaller school a try.

Recognizing the name, Nanney said yes, and it turned out he made the right call. Lane is graduating this year, and has won the school’s Most Inspirational Student award after turning a C grade-point average into almost straight A’s.

“He’s one of what I call middle college miracles,” Nanney said. “He was a good person but had not been doing the best in the comprehensive setting, and he has become a leader at our school.”

Together, the two have taken it upon themselves to rally the students and faculty to get involved in the event at which they first crossed paths.

Last year, Lane helped organize a benefit concert for the cause that raised more than $3,000. This year he has sent out Facebook invitations to many of his classmates, and some of the responses were surprising. He even hopes to make the relay the site of the school’s annual reunions.

Meanwhile, this weekend’s event has a special significance to him because it falls on the nine-year anniversary of his brother’s untimely death.

More than half of the student body is signed up to participate in the relay — a 24-hour walk from 10 a.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. Sunday at the OCC track — according to Nanney.

Lane plans to walk again until it hurts and then keep on going like he did on the fortuitous night in 2007.

“It’s funny how things happen in life,” Nanney said. “We happen to be at a certain place at a certain time, and I just feel it was meant to be.”