As raffle numbers were called during Tuesday’s Color Me Pink breast cancer support group event, Janet Mullins clutched her ticket and watched as other survivors shot out of their chairs to claim miscellaneous prizes.

Some won bath soaps and lotion while others found gift certificates wrapped in pink paper.

Surrounded by friends who shared her diagnosis or simply showed up to lend moral support, Mullins smiled as her numbers were read by the announcer.

With a satisfied grin, the 50-year-old Anderson woman took her prize package from the young girl handing them out and returned to her table where her three friends waited.

As she pulled the envelope from the package, Mullins let out a laugh that contagiously spread to her friends. With raised eyebrows, they passed around the gift certificate, laughing at the irony of such a gift being given to a post-chemo cancer patient in a wig.

“It’s a gift certificate to get my hair done,” Mullins announced with a smirk.

Her friend, fellow breast cancer survivor Nancy Hunt laughed for a few moments and then said, “If you want to hear that we still have our humor, she won a haircut and has no hair!”

Mullins and Hunt were just two of hundreds of local women who attended Saint John’s Hearts and Hands breast cancer support group’s Color Me Pink event Tuesday.

The event, which featured author Beverly Kirkhart of “Chicken Soup for the Survivor’s Soul,” allowed breast cancer survivors and their friends to learn from one another’s experiences, hear guest lectures about breast health, and spend an evening in a room with women who understood their circumstances.

Kirkhart advised the audience to find their own method of coping with the breast cancer diagnosis. For her, it was meditation, journaling and yoga.

Other methods were less traditional.

“I made it a goal to get 15.5 hugs a day,” Kirkhart said, explaining the importance of maintaining a positive attitude.

Hunt was diagnosed in 2003 and has since become the breast guardian for her four friends.

Janet Logan of Anderson is one of those friends and said their own personal mammograms are no longer so. “Nancy makes us. She follows up with everyone’s mammograms.”

Often regarding their cancer as an enemy, the women in the event were ready to do battle. Speaker Kirkhart said each cancer survivor must make the decision to go to war with breast cancer. “I could give up and check out or I could fight for my life.”