Faith Fancher joined KTVU in 1983 as a reporter/writer for the Ten O'Clock News. Her awards are numerous and include a citation by the Emmy committee for work on the award-winning documentary of the Vietnam Wall Memorial. In April 1993, Faith received the Bay Area Black Media Coalition's Beverly Johnson Award as Journalist of the Year.

Her most memorable story is the East Bay Hills fire, because it was so similar to an experience in her own life. "I was 2 years old when my own house burned to the ground. The only thing left was my mother, my sister, and me." she said. "We all got out alive, but with nothing left. The fire, literally the smell of the fire, brought back those memories to me. I was glad I could give accurate information to everyone and have them trust me to report the truth to them. I met many brave men and women, including those whose homes were lost and those who risked their lives to fight the fire."

Faith Fancher's broadcasting career began in college at WBIR-TV/Radio in Knoxville as a radio news writer. After graduation in 1972, she was hired by WBIR as a reporter. Faith was subsequently hired by WSM-TV in Nashville as a television correspondent; NBN (the National Black Network) in New York, a syndicated radio network supplying news and public affairs programming to 100 affiliate stations; and National Public Radio (NPR) as a reporter/anchor in 1978. She served as Washington, D.C., correspondent for CNN in 1980 and returned to NPR in 1982.

She is a native of Franklin, Tenn., where she spent her childhood summers on her grandparent's farm. She earned a B.S. degree at the Tennessee-Knoxville with a double major in Education and English.

She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, and is a board member of the National Association of Black Journalists. Her activities and awards include drama and dance, Black Student Union and the Outstanding Young Women in America of 1979.

Faith Fancher passed away at the age of 53 on Sunday October 19, 2003 in her Oakland home, surrounded by family and friends.

Her plight was well known to thousands of KTVU viewers after she disclosed six years ago that she was being treated for the disease. Hoping her story would teach others the benefits of early detection, she allowed her friend and former KTVU co-anchor Elaine Corral Kendall and a camera crew to follow her treatment, which began with a lumpectomy at Alta Bates Hospital in the spring of 1997. "Faith's Story" aired for three nights. It generated hundreds of letters from well-wishers and won numerous awards.

"I thought I had the responsibility to put it out there after asking people the most intimate questions about their lives," Faith told her former colleague Bob MacKenzie in an interview last year. "I thought this was my chance to step up and make a difference."

The surgery, however, revealed more bad news. Doctors had succeeded in removing the tumor from her left breast, but the cancer -- which was a particularly aggressive type -- was invasive and tests determined that other tissue in her breast was already precancerous.

She told Bay Area viewers that a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery were her best chance of beating back the disease. On May 22, 1997, she told viewers, many of whom had written notes offering comfort and support, that they would be "seeing me for a long time."

That September, believing she'd beaten the disease, Faith returned to work. But her grueling treatment left her tired and weak, and within a couple of weeks she left the newsroom for good, according to Tony Bonilla, assistant news director at KTVU. Two years later, her doctors told her the cancer was back.

Giving up her place in front of the television camera didn't mean she dropped the crusade she'd begun on behalf of others struggling with breast cancer. Faith knew that her position and her ability to profile her journey for the public allowed her access to some of the best treatment and doctors available, and she committed herself to helping those with lesser means struggle through their own battles with the disease. Along with friends, including many prominent Bay Area journalists, she established Friends of Faith and succeeded in raising more than $500,000 for breast cancer research and giving stipends to low-income and minority women with breast cancer.

"I have been with her and watched people come up to her and say: 'If it wasn't for you, I would never have caught my cancer,'" said Corral Kendall. "She really saved lives."

By June 2002, she had undergone seven operations for cancer and continued her valiant fight by trying new treatments and continued to talk about her struggle with Channel 2 viewers. Corral Kendall said that even though the disease was in much of her body, she never gave up hope.

"I will always remember her as a strong, vivacious woman who absolutely loved life, who fought to the very end and encouraged other people to fight, too," she said. "No matter how many times it came back, she said: 'Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it. This is my job now. I'm fighting cancer.'"

But in the end, state-of-the-art surgery wasn't enough to beat back the virulent disease.