Hope is everywhere Annette Walker looks these days and has been for several years.
When Walker entered a conference room in 2019 and unveiled an ambitious, $1 billion plan to radically improve cancer care in Orange County to a few journalists – who tend to default toward skepticism – the audacity of her hope was infectious.
It’s on the name of the Irvine hospital that welcomed its first patients Dec. 1. It’s in the message shared by everyone who works there, especially its president.
And during a recent discussion on the expansive second-floor terrace at the county’s first cancer-specific hospital, the word “HOPE” even appeared over her shoulder, painted in blue on the roof of a parking structure with the Great Park and mountains in the background.
For Walker, who was hired as the president of City of Hope Orange County in 2018, her hope has become a reality, and it would be easy to wrap it up that neatly.
But through a series of chats over the years – during community events, hard-hat tours and grand openings – Walker revealed something that drives her in everything from work to her family.
“Without my faith, there isn’t hope,” she said. “It’s a foundation of my personal life, my professional life.
“My faith has always given me a confidence to proceed in the face of adversity or challenges,” she added.
“And that’s not dissimilar here.”
She took a leap of faith when she accepted the job to lead Duarte-based City of Hope’s expansion into Orange County. And she said she was buoyed over the next few years by her belief that God would keep the project on track, even through extended delays caused by years of unusual rain and pandemic-related supply chain snags that threatened the hospital’s construction.
Faith also led Walker to make one of the most spontaneous decisions of her life (albeit one that was sparked 12 years earlier) when the devout Catholic briefly stepped away from work, seven months before the hospital’s opening, to attend the May Papal conclave that resulted in the election of the first American pope.
“It’s who she is, unabashedly,” said Chuck Walker, who celebrated 45 years of marriage to Annette in Rome thanks to that decision. “Her faith, a commitment to the community and a laser-focused drive to get things done are why she’s been so successful.”
A place she lives in and loves
Walker grew up in Pomona and attended Loyola Marymount (where Chuck was the first person she met) for her undergraduate degree.
But, since then, she’s become so tied to Orange County that location could have been a deal breaker when she was asked to oversee development of the newest branches of City of Hope.
“I honestly probably wouldn’t have taken the job if it wasn’t Orange County,” the Coto de Caza resident said. “My whole professional career was spent here, and I’ve lived here since 1980.
“What had me say yes to the job was that the opportunity was really significant for a place I’d lived and loved, and for people I loved and worked with.”
When the Walkers’ youngest daughter, Emily, got married in June, they had 28 family members on the dance floor together – among them were their six children and 15 grandchildren. And they’re thrilled this is their year to host a full house for Christmas.
Chuck, who had a successful career in the technology field but left that behind to focus on family, coaches the freshman gold basketball team at Santa Margarita High, their kids’ alma mater.
“Now I’m able to coach basketball,” Chuck said. “And she’s able to build hospitals.”
Walker worked 13 years as a medical strategist with St. Joseph Health System – the final two as president of strategy for Providence St. Joseph Health – and developed strong ties to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange.
Her time with St. Joseph was when she first felt comfortable and even encouraged to talk about her faith, after spending some of her career being told to “leave that part of yourself in the car.”
She said she never wants to impose on anyone, but often finds that people are appreciative if she asks if she can pray for them. That included the family she met with to discuss their loved one’s declining condition a few moments before a December interview on the City of Hope terrace.
“Most people are spiritual brains,” she said. “They’re not all religious. But most people have some spiritual sense, and there’s an important role it plays in treating cancer.
“Seventy percent of patients say spiritual care had an important bearing on their journey. And so the City of Hope has always also allowed me to feel free that that’s OK to be that way.”
‘Vision, tenacity, skill and heart’
After City of Hope announced its expansion into Orange County in 2018, it took a series of steps that culminated in the milestone hospital opening in December.
In January 2020, only two months before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, City of Hope established its county presence with the opening of its Newport Beach treatment center.
In August 2022, it followed up with the 190,000-square-foot Lennar Foundation Cancer Center in Irvine.
A little more than three years later, it was time to cut the ribbon for Orange County’s first cancer hospital next door.
“It requires a special leader to deliver on this promise, one who has the vision, tenacity, skill and heart to guide us on this journey,” City of Hope CEO Robert Stone said as he introduced Walker on a brisk November afternoon in front of the 73-bed hospital.
She also was praised by Irvine mayor Larry Agran, who said Walker had inspired “a culture of innovation that is reshaping health care as we know it.”
Later during the grand opening celebration, as she took a brief break from the crowd, Walker seemed to exhale. City of Hope Orange County was 12 days away from treating its first hospital patients, and she was finally grasping the enormity of what had been accomplished.
A few weeks later, she shared a bit of what she was thinking.
“When you’re part of something, in the middle of it, you’re always just focused on the goals. You don’t appreciate all that might become of it, ’cause you’re going one step at a time,” she said.
“And with the hospital and the whole component we have now here in this 72-acre campus, I know better now than I knew in 2018 that we have no idea the impact of everything that’s going to happen here.”
The next day, Walker sent an email with some thoughts she’d jotted down in recent weeks to try to capture what she’d experienced.
Among her musings:
• She had reached a point in her career with Providence St. Joseph where she “could do the work in my sleep.” She had a private bathroom – “a sure sign of success!” Then City of Hope’s Stone called and talked about changing cancer care “for a community I loved.”
• The strategist had a plan and didn’t intend to deviate from it, especially for what essentially was a start-up.
• Walker was comfortable, but she also realized that comfort might not be best for her. “The trappings of success can be deceiving,” she said. So, in her new job, she opted to do her desk work on a Costco table, and to make private calls from a nearby equipment room.
• “Choose work that matters and makes the world a better place,” she concluded.
Spontaneous decision
In April, when Pope Francis died, Walker said she knew immediately that she and Chuck needed to be in Rome for the conclave to choose his successor. It’s something she’d wanted to do since the first Jesuit pope’s election, in 2013, and this might be their one chance.
Of course, she had a hospital to open seven months later.
Chuck woke up to the news, both about the pope’s death and his wife’s plan to pursue what had been a bucket-list experience. “Yeah, right, you’ll never get your work figured out,” she said he told her.
But after she made sure Stone didn’t have major concerns about her idea, she had her chief of staff clear her schedule and booked the trip.
“It was that fast. And it was one of the best decisions ever,” she said. “I’m not a spontaneous person. I don’t do crazy stuff like that.
“It was the most spontaneous thing I think I’ve ever done.”
The trip included the Walkers’ 45th anniversary and the Papal election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost from Chicago. She was bemused that, when word spread about the American pontiff, she heard a priest wonder if he’d want to make Rome great again.
Three months later, Walker was filling her photo book with pictures from the trip and spotted an image of a cardinal being interviewed near her, apparently on his way into the conclave.
It was the soon-to-be Pope Leo XIV.
The Walkers’ travel plans include hiking the 500-mile French Way of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail next September.
The trek from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in Spain should take them around 35 days. They tackled part of it in 2017 but are determined to do all of it this time.
“It’s an amazing experience that I look forward to for many reasons,” she said. “And one is to reflect backward and forward. You know, a lot of times, people take to Camino after a big life event, and I think that’s good for that.
“What’s so wonderful about it is, often, you have so much noise that you don’t get to just sit with yourself and sit with your thoughts, and it’s not like that there. It’s beautiful.
“I think the Camino is how God meant the world to be.”
‘Not going soon’
Walker’s upcoming adventure does not mean she’s walking away from City of Hope Orange County; she’s simply planning a sabbatical of sorts.
She insisted that she doesn’t look at the opening of the cancer hospital as a finish line. Instead, it’s the beginning of the next phase of her journey.
“I’m not going soon,” she said. “I want to see this set on a very strong foundation.”
Walker said the next year will include the development of a master plan for the Irvine campus that will deal with the need for future growth.
While she concedes that it’s impossible to understand just how much City of Hope will mean to Orange County in the long term – “Maybe our children will see it,” she says – Walker believes in a future where the goal is to cure cancer, not just treat it.
And she’s thankful she took the leap of faith to pursue hope.
“I have had an amazing career, and so many opportunities,” Walker said.
“I never had a job where I thought what I did mattered as much as this.”