The story below is from our July/August 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
When cancer made transportation a barrier to treatment, Becky Pollard turned pain into purpose — and now her son carries on the mission to get patients to care, one ride at a time.
Courtesy of Drew Pollard
Becky Pollard ringing the bell at Blue Ridge Cancer Care after her last cancer treatment.
A cancer diagnosis brings up a lot of fear: the disease itself, the time-consuming, expensive, often exhausting and painful chemo and an uncertain future.
Though Becky Pollard had all those feelings in 2022, she discovered that for many of her fellow patients, there was another issue — inaccessibility.
While receiving IV treatments at Blue Ridge Cancer Care, Pollard overheard nurses and staff discussing patients who couldn’t make it.
Gas was too expensive. They couldn’t get a ride.
“She was watching some of the nurses line up taxi rides for people (and) collect money…” says her son, Drew Pollard.
Despite her own ordeal, Becky Pollard was never one to sit by when she could help — something she instilled in Drew from a young age.
“She was always involved with helping people in need … a lot of this stuff she did real quietly.”
She fed first responders lunch every Monday through her office at Business Solutions, a Salem Insurance Broker. She’d reach out to school systems to help kids in need, get people food for Thanksgiving and deliver groceries during the pandemic.
Becky Pollard couldn’t stop others’ disease or pain, but she saw transportation as a place where she could relieve a burden. She cofounded Healing Wheels with Jolee Preston, a licensed Adult Nurse Practitioner, whom she met at BRCC. Healing Wheels is a lean operation with an all-volunteer board. One hundred percent of their donations go to providing taxis, Uber, Lyft and gas cards to ensure every patient can get to and from their BRCC cancer treatment.
Sadly, Becky Pollard succumbed to her cancer in 2024, but not before passing the nonprofit’s torch to her son.
As board President, Drew Pollard keeps things on track and helps to spearhead fundraising efforts. Board members Andi Pollard, BRCC’s Clinical Research Supervisor and Jolee Preston and the “unsung heroes” of BRCC find patients who need transportation assistance while performing their everyday duties.
Rounding out the board are Mark Noftsinger, an accountant, and Angie Leonard, who brings invaluable nonprofit experience.
Drew and Becky Pollard worked together every day through Healing Wheels and Business Solutions. They were incredibly close.
Now, it’s an honor to continue to build on her legacy, giving something she created back to Roanoke at a time when it may have felt easier to give up.
The story above is from our July/August 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!