By Virgil Dickson
WEST PATERSON, N.J. - Robert Reda has served the community with more than two decades of law enforcement, and now borough residents are coming together to help the police chief with mounting medical bills in his battle with lung cancer.
“It’s wonderful, all the support we’re getting,” said Carlo Renne, a patrol officer and president of the West Paterson Policemen’s Benevolent Association. “Our chief is a great person, and he knows a lot of people.”
Since being diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year, Reda has decided to pursue an alternative treatment to chemotherapy and radiation, a procedure that will cost him thousands of dollars, according to PBA leaders.
Reda’s health insurance does not cover the cost of alternative treatment. So to help the police chief defray the medical bills, the PBA is hosting “Pasta Night,” tonight at the Amalgamated Meat Cutter’s Hall, 245 Paterson Ave., Little Falls.
For $60 a ticket, people can have an all-you-can-eat pasta dinner. The event for Reda is expected to raise more than $18,000. Another fund-raiser also is planned for June 1 on the Garret Mountain Reservation, according to Lynne Petermann, owner of The Pooky Professor Positive Puppy Training at 163 E. Main St. in Little Falls, who will be the host of a dog walk. Petermann is asking for a $20 donation per person to attend the event.
“I’m very grateful for anybody who is helping me,” said the 51-year-old Reda, who has been police chief since 2004. “It shows humanity survives.”
Reda, who did not smoke, took a leave of absence earlier this year to be treated out of state. He declined to discuss his illness or treatment any further. Though Reda has been back as police chief since April, he will continue to have periodic out-of-state lung cancer treatments, Petermann said.
Meanwhile, Mayor Pat Lepore said he felt the 27-man Police Department did a fine job in coping with Reda’s monthlong absence.
“We are so short-manned that whenever someone is out it has an impact,” Lepore said. “But the department has handled it well; the service hasn’t missed a beat.”
Seeing the healthy and fit police chief become ill was difficult and surprising, friends and law enforcement colleagues said.
“It’s been an awareness eye-opener,” said Gerald Hunter, chief of the Little Falls Police Department. “What’s around the corner, no one ever knows.”
This year, there are an estimated 6,210 people in New Jersey who have been diagnosed with lung cancer, compared with 215,020 nationally, according to the American Cancer Society in New York. This is down from the 229,400 national cases and 6,310 local lung cancer cases in New Jersey reported in 2007. The disease is by far the leading cause of cancer deaths among both men and women. About 85 percent of people who contract lung cancer were once smokers, according the American Cancer Society.
Non-smokers tend to get the disease through secondhand smoke or the regular inhaling of other air pollutants. More people die of lung cancer than from colon, breast and prostate cancers combined. Only about 15 percent of people diagnosed with lung cancer survive the disease after five years, American Cancer Society officials said.
Though going to an alternative treatment route is perceived to be healthier, cancer experts said they tend not to recommend the procedures.
“The standard modality is surgery, radiation and chemotherapy,” said Arnold Baskies, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. “There are no peer-reviewed alternative methods that have proved to be effective.”
Norman Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association in New York, agreed with the medical assessment of alternative treatments not being proved to be effective.
“We don’t recommend it,” Edelman said of non-radiation-based cancer treatments because the procedures have not been scientifically proven to work.
Despite the skepticism about alternative cancer treatments, friends of Reda said they believe he will make a full recovery from the lung cancer and noted that the police chief already seems to have returned to his healthy self.
In the meantime, Reda is doing what friends say he does best: keeping people safe.
“He is back in the office, which makes me feel good,” Totowa Police Chief Robert Coyle said. “He is a good friend.”
Fast facts
For more information on the fund-raisers planned for Reda, call the PBA at 973- 345-8111 and ask for detective bureau, or call Lynne Petermann at 973-444-5880.
Copyright 2008 The Record (Bergen County, NJ)