Cruising against cancer, cruising for Dezi

MOSES LAKE — When the last car honked its horn, revved its engine and drove by, Desiree Giaconia started crying.

“I am just so honored and thankful that they took the time to do this,” Giaconia said. “It was so much more than I ever could have expected.”

It was quite a parade of cars and motorcycles that drove by as she sat on the corner of Division Street and East Mizzou Court with her 5-year-old daughter Mia, her mother Mona Callahan and aunt Maureen. Not quite a classic car show — no one’s having those during the time of COVID-19 — but close.

Giaconia, 30, was diagnosed with breast cancer in mid-May, and some of her friends — more than a few of them classic car enthusiasts — wanted to show how they felt.

“The chemo is kicking my butt,” Giaconia said. “I have some bad days, and some good.”

She’s only a month into 18 weeks of very intense chemotherapy. And after that, she will have another eight months of drug treatment before it’s all done.

But Giaconia said that with the cancer diagnosis in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has to seriously limit any contact she has with people. Even an outdoor party was out of the question.

So, what to do?

“We tried to put this together, a little drive-by,” said Matt Johnson, the unofficial organizer of the “Cruise for Dezi” and the owner of a restored 1951 black Chevrolet Styleline Deluxe. “We’re all going to show our support for her, since we haven’t been able to visit her.”

By “we,” Johnson means members of the Sickboy Greaser car club, who along with a number of car owners and motorcycle riders — some maybe complete strangers — gathered in the parking lot in front of Big Lots in Moses Lake last Saturday to organize the “Cruise for Dezi.”

“We’re probably going to spring this on some people who don’t even know what’s happening,” he said.

This also isn’t Johnson’s first cruising drive by to honor someone struggling with a difficult situation. In May, he organized a drive by to celebrate the birthday of a boy who has been separated from his mother since the pandemic started, and also cruised by Moses Lake’s nursing homes.

In the parking lot in front of Big Lots, a man sitting in a bright-orange, mid-1970s Jeep who gave his name only as “D.T.” said he’s been cruising Moses Lake for much of his life, so he didn’t need much of an excuse to come out and drive.

“Back in the 1970s, I got 33 tickets in three years for cruising Main Street, Third Avenue, Broadway,” he said. “I never had a DWI or wreck in my entire life. They didn’t like cruising back in those days in Moses Lake.”

Giaconia said she last worked on March 16, when Papa’s Casino, where she is a pit boss and card dealer, closed down. Since her cancer diagnosis, she has relied a lot on the goodness of friends, as well as the Columbia Basin Cancer Foundation, to help keep things going at home.

“They’ve been wonderful,” she said.

Giaconia tugged at the black stocking cap holding on her blue wig. She has several, but this is the wig her daughter Mia picked out.

“This is my most-worn wig,” Giaconia added.

Johnson said things like the drive by are just what “car people” do.

“Car people generally have huge hearts,” he said. “Car people always kind of like to make people happy.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].