Chase Langley walked into a church courtyard Friday and was greeted with strong meaningful hugs by friends who always wonder: when he disappears, will they ever see him again. Langley, 41, has been in and out of the hospital for the last 11 years, battling a lymphoma that killed his twin brother at age nine.
Two of his nephews also died of the same cancer, though he and his twin were the only two of the family’s six children to get sick. He credits an oncologist named Erin Reed with saving his life no less than six times. The type of cancer he has usually attacks children, not adults. In the 11 years he’s had his lymphoma, some 246 children have died of the same disease, he said.

At the time he had his first outbreak at the age of 29, Langley had a good life on track as a pastry chef, servicing big events at casinos. He was living in a nice home in North Park. But when disease hit, he had no support system. The high cost of treatment, the medications, he couldn’t work, so he had to give up his home and ended up on the streets.

He was born in Springfield, Illinois. His dad was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy; his mother in the Air Force as a medic on special duty, meaning high security clearance. At the age of 13, it was clear that Chase was gay, something that his father couldn’t deal with, so he put him up for adoption. He ended up in a group home as a ward of the state in Illinois. His mother got mad and threw his father out. Langley ended up being an angry youth. He knew he wasn’t welcome at home any more so had a friend buy him a bus ticket to California, in another name. But his mother still managed to find out where he’d gone.

“I told the judge, if the were really my parents then they wouldn’t have thrown me out when my dad found me having sex with my best friend,” Langley said. He refers to his father as the “sperm donor” that helped bring him in to the world; choosing not to use the term father. In fact, Langley said, his father was instrumental in tossing as many gay men and women as he could, out of the military.

He stayed in San Diego, put himself through school, learning to be a chef, loving his new world, his new family, getting involved with the local chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “The sisters gave me the strength to deal with it all,” he said, referring to both his family and the cancer. And he credits the support he gets from pastor Jim Lovett at the First Lutheran Church of San Diego downtown, and its accompanying outreach operation Third Avenue Charitable Organization (TACO) with moral and health care support. “I won’t go back to Illinois. I go to Jim when I need something.”

He has Medicare, but is afraid the new health care proposals will take it away. The treatments can be as painful as the disease, he said. "Some treatments are painful. I mean they're poison, literally. But I'd rather have them testing treatments on me than testing kids. The only way to survive is to fight for yourself, to be your own advocate," he said, referring as much to his health care as to surviving on the street.