KC Fontes learned to ride a bike before he could walk. His dad, David, bought him a red DYNO BMX bike for Christmas 1999, when KC was just six months old. “He was my first-born son,” says David, “and all I wanted to do was get him on a bike as soon as I could.”
For the next decade KC spent almost as much time speeding around on two wheels as he did on two legs. But in sixth grade he came home one day from basketball practice at his school in Salinas, Calif., complaining that his right leg hurt. His calf just below the knee was swollen, and doctors discovered a rare tumor.
A month after the diagnosis, KC had an operation to remove the growth. Three months after that he started chemotherapy, but the tumor proved extremely difficult to eradicate. KC missed seventh grade, and for a year-and-a-half he often couldn’t be around friends because the treatment suppressed his immune system.