Sandra's Fight

Sandra Sears has dedicated her entire life to making profound impacts on and enriching the lives of countless numbers of youth throughout our Tampa community.  It is time for our community to come together to support Miss Sandra in her battle against cancer and her fight to finally be cancer free.  SHE NEEDS OUR HELP!  Sandra has been battling ovarian and breast cancers since July of 2014, she has endured 200 rounds of chemo therapy and countless surgeries to remove tumors from her chest, brain and abdomen. She is currently in remission from the ovarian cancer.At this very moment she is at Tampa General Hospital recovering from yet another surgery to remove 3 more tumors from under her arm.  HER FIGHT IS NOT OVER and she needs our help for an upcoming several month long trip to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Sandra graduated from Robinson High School at 16 then got her undergrad from the University of Texas ,then back to Tampa to attain her Masters from USF and started teaching her first dance students at the Port Tampa Community Center when she was just 18 years old.  She has acted as choreographer through the years for the University of Tampa dance department, the Plant High School Danceros and the Robinson Starlets.  For 35 years Sandra and her studio, Atelier of Dance, touched the lives of thousands of young dancers throughout our community.  Atelier was a different kind of dance studio, it was a studio for the kids who couldn’t necessarily afford the other local dance studio class fees and costume costs.  Sandra cared for her students and their families as though they were all part of her family.  She provided scholarship for countless kids, charged a fraction of the standard cost for all of her classes and recitals, and every single recital costume was made from scratch and hand sewn at her mother’s home with the help of every single mother, of every single student who performed. Sandra made Atelier a safe haven, an after-school home for latchkey kids, a place to spend our summers and place for us to make lifelong friends.  She picked kids up from their homes when they didn’t have rides to class, she required her students to maintain a certain GPA to perform and encouraged high standards of ethics and morals.  Sandra partnered with the Lighthouse for the Blind as well as a local girls foster care home to provide free classes to foster kids and blind and deaf students. In addition to fighting this medical battle of her own, Sandra continues to care daily for her mother who has advanced Alzheimer’s and her father who is now legally blind.  The physical and financial toll this 5+ year battle has taken is immense and the upcoming treatment she requires in Houston will add significantly to that burden.  Please help us come together in support of Sandra and lift some of this burden from her so she can win this battle once and for all with the help of the community that she has spent her life supporting!  SANDRA : COMMUNITY, DEDICATION, INSPIRATION & PASSION