www.roanoke.com

Ever since she was 3 years old, Sabra Lucas wanted to be a veterinarian.

She doesn't know why. But as a teenager, she prepared for that day by working as a vet's assistant.

After graduating from Cave Spring High School and Virginia Tech, she worked as a graphic artist. But when she was 27, the urge to work with animals returned, and Lucas went back to school to become an animal doctor.

Her passion for animals hasn't stopped and for the past three years she's been a vet at Old Dominion Veterinary Clinic, the same Troutville clinic where she worked as a teen.

Owners of her pet patients there now have come to know Lucas as the cycling vet.

Lucas is a member of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's cycling Team in Training for the second consecutive year. Last year she raised $5,500 to participate in the 100-mile bike ride at Lake Tahoe, Nev. The money goes to cancer research, especially for finding a cure for blood cancers. The research benefits both humans and animals.

Over the Easter weekend, Lucas met the required $4,300 sponsorship goal and exceeded the total $5,500 goal she had set for this year's June 3 daylong ride.

"I wish I could find a cure so I could stop treating these patients," Lucas said recently at the clinic, where she's treating three dogs and a cat that have cancer.

Lucas' promotional flier for sponsorships shows pictures of the canine patients and her family members whom she's riding in honor of this year and the ones she rode in honor of last year.

This year's honorees include two of her own five dogs, Fetzer and Duke, who died of cancer last summer, and Count de Money, a dog who had clinic staff and his owners "wrapped around his big paw" before recently succumbing to T-cell lymphoma.

Lucas' stepfather and cycling pal, Doug Leffel, who is recovering from cancer surgery, also is an honoree.

"Lots of my family and friends had cancer or have it," Lucas said, including her father, Jim Lucas, who died in 1993, and an aunt and an uncle.

"I think it's really, really important to raise this money for research to find a cure, whether it's for humans or animals," Lucas, 37, said, adding that some medications are tried on dogs and cats to help determine their effectiveness in humans.

Lucas said she was devastated by losing her dogs and "I bawled my eyes out when I was putting Maxine and Count to sleep."

Maxine was a puppy when Lucas worked as a vet's assistant.

Lucas was just out of veterinary school at the University of Tennessee when she treated her first cancer patient, a dog named Ahava, at an Ohio clinic where she was practicing.

She uses chemotherapy -- a combination of pills and injections -- on her patients that are diagnosed with cancer through blood and urine tests.

For additional treatment, Lucas sends pets either to the University of Tennessee or North Carolina State University, the two closest oncology centers for animals. Much of Lucas' continuing education has been in oncology, and she added, "I can usually get the guys at UT pretty quick" on cases when she needs a second opinion.

Being a cyclist for years made it easier for Lucas to decide to participate in the Leukemia & Lymphoma ride.

Last year's ride, she said, was the most memorable event in her life.

Rob Leonard, the team's coach and a cancer survivor, said the ride "is a great way to experience a different level of fitness and do it for a great cause."

Lucas, he said, "knows what she's going into."

Leonard's team this year includes not only Lucas and himself but also Roanoke Valley residents Aaron Eanes and Sunshine Unterwagner and Blacksburg residents Jan McGilliard, David McPherson and Kaye Kriz.

"A 100-mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe is painful, long and arduous, but it is nothing compared to having cancer and undergoing chemotherapy or losing a loved one to cancer," said Lucas, who trains at night on a stationary bike at home and takes weekend bike rides with her teammates.

"When it gets kind of tough, you look at them [cancer patients] and say 'I don't have cancer,' " Lucas said.