Back to the races: Vancouver drag racer returns to his passion after beating cancer in his teens

Now 20, Chun is in remission and back on the track. He secured a major win at the five-day Mickey Thompson Million Dollar Drag Race in St. Louis in September. His passion for racing, family and team of oncology specialists at Kaiser Permanente, are all a part of what helped him persevere through the diagnosis and treatment, he said.

“We’ve always done it as a family,” Chun said. “It’s all that we’ve ever had.”

Switching gears

Chun’s rear-engine dragster sat without its engine at his father’s automotive shop, DC Auto Solutions, on a cold Tuesday afternoon.

During the winter off-season — between November and March — the car’s engine receives a tuneup, while the Chun family works on other routine maintenance.

The family often jokes that Cooper Chun was born into racing, considering his mother, Traci Chun, went into labor with him at a racetrack.

“My water broke at a racetrack in Woodburn (Ore.),” Traci Chun said. “We have pictures of him at like 3 weeks old at the Sacramento (Calif.) Raceway. This is all the life he has ever known, really.”

Cooper Chun began racing when he was 8 years old, working in tandem with his father, David Chun, who is also his coach. Traci Chun also races from time to time, along with Cooper Chun’s aunt and cousins.

“My earliest memories would just be going up the racetrack with kids my age and wanting to race,” Cooper Chun said. “Every Wednesday for the last 20 years, we’ve been going.”

When Cooper Chun was 16, he won junior dragster driver of the year for the National Hot Rod Association’s Division 6, a region that encompasses a large portion of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.

Just two years later, at 18, he began experiencing severe pain in his hip. At first, he thought it was growing pains or a torn muscle. But it had gotten too painful to walk. A trip to the emergency department and an MRI discovered a mass on his pelvis.

A biopsy then confirmed he had a rare form of cancer called Ewing sarcoma that can affect the bones or nearby soft tissue.

In the United States, only about 200 cases of Ewing sarcoma are reported among adolescents younger than 20, according to the American Cancer Society. The exact cause of Ewing sarcoma is unknown, but it can be related to a genetic mutation that causes cells to grow abnormally, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In Cooper Chun’s case, the primary concern was that the tumor was sitting right on the hip, his Kaiser Permanente oncologist Dr. Daniel Da Graca said.

If doctors were to proceed with surgery, they potentially would have had to remove his left leg, including the hip and joint. This would have been extremely tough for a young patient, especially considering both legs are an integral aspect of racing, Da Graca said.

“We first start with a nurse navigator whenever there is a new cancer diagnosis. We also have a team of surgical, medical and radiation oncologists who all specialize in treating sarcoma,” Da Graca said. “That multidisciplinary approach is so helpful.”

Often, treatment for Ewing sarcoma includes surgery and chemotherapy, sometimes paired with radiation, Da Graca said.

Cooper Chun’s team at Kaiser Permanente included oncology, infusion and radiation specialists. Oncology nurse case manager Alison Eshleman stayed in close communication with Cooper Chun and his mother.

“You never felt alone, you just felt like you had this whole team of people working and fighting for you,” Traci Chun said.

After multiple rounds of treatment that began in October 2022, Cooper Chun’s tumor began to shrink. He officially went into remission by May 2023.

By September of that year, he returned to the track where he competed in a series of races across Montana, Missouri and North Carolina.

“All my strength had gone, so at first it was like, do I even have enough strength to even hold the pedal down?” Cooper Chun said. “There were so many unknowns going down the first pass, but I kind of got back in it and got a feel for it, and it was like I’d never left.”

The drag racing community in Vancouver and Portland gave him strength.

“It’s a really unified family group of people,” Traci Chun said. “That was highlighted the most when Cooper was diagnosed with cancer. The community just rallied. It just was overwhelming. That’s just the way the community is.”

Today, Cooper Chun is in his second year at Clark College where he is studying accounting. He plans to transfer to Washington State University in Pullman in the fall. He’s gearing up for his first race of the season, which will be at the end of March in Las Vegas.

Routine scans and check-ins with his team at Kaiser Permanente help him keep tabs on his tumor.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without racing,” Cooper Chun said. “But the biggest thing is to focus on your passion and do whatever you need to do to get through it.”