UFCW Featured Faces

Cathi Schafer
Survivor & Advocate

Cathi Schafer has been a member of UFCW Local 1428 in Claremont, Calif. for 28 years. She’s a front-end checker, supervisor, and trainer at a Vons grocery store. And she’s a committed trade unionist. She knows what it takes to secure victory for working families—whether fighting for better wages, health care, or pension plans—and she has spent her career as a union member doing just that. She has also become a tireless advocate for health care, standing up for health care during the Southern California grocery strike of 2003-2004. For Cathi, the strike to save comprehensive health care was especially personal—and it wasn’t the first time she battled the odds. 

Ten years ago, Cathi was diagnosed with breast cancer. “It was daunting,” she says. “If I hadn’t had good health care in the first place, I wouldn’t have been able to get early detection and I wouldn’t have had clinical trials that I believe kept me alive.”

Thanks to her union health care plan, she received regular preventative care and her cancer was detected early. Her health insurance allowed her to participate in an aggressive treatment program at the City of Hope Hospital—a facility that specializes in cancer treatment. She endured a double mastectomy, heavy-duty chemotherapy, and a stem cell treatment that took eight months to complete.

Cathi is acutely aware that comprehensive health insurance is what saved her life. It meant early detection. It meant that all of her procedures—from blood work, to surgery, to top-notch stem-cell treatment, to clinical trials, and expensive chemotherapy—were paid for. It meant piece of mind to focus on her recovery, and not on her bills. 

Yet Cathi also knows from firsthand experience that others are not as lucky.  Years after a successful open-heart surgery, an unexpected job transition left her father uninsured. And Cathi and her family made great sacrifices to help him pay the cost of his ongoing care—even moving in with her parents to save money.

Eventually, he was forced to turn to the state for care. “This was a sharp blow to his dignity, and to his health,” Cathi says. “He had no continuity of care, and he fell behind on preventive visits, and no longer had regular access to his own doctors and specialists.” His health worsened, and tragically, he passed away; not because it was his time, but because he didn’t have the health care he needed.  

These experiences have made Cathi more determined than ever to push for better health coverage for all Americans.  Cancer-free for eight years now, she is ready for an uphill battle against those who want to shift health care cost burdens from employers to workers.  “HSAs and consumer driven health care are just ways to make Americans sicker. We can’t have a system where money is so tight that people go without eyeglasses, without checkups, without immunizations. That’s crazy.”  As union member, activist and cancer survivor, Cathi seems uniquely prepared for battle.  She is, after all, an experienced fighter.