Linda Hurtado got the call while she was away at college.
Her mom was calling to tell her she’d just had a lumpectomy. She had breast cancer.
“That hit me really hard,” Linda tells me. “My mom and I were like besties. I just adored her. And I really wanted her to have told me ahead of time so I could have been the person holding her hand through the surgery.”
But her mom didn’t tell her first. And there’s a reason for that.
This was a time when women didn’t talk about cancer. When getting diagnosed felt like something you’d done wrong. Like it was your fault. Like you should be ashamed. Moms were supposed to be the caretakers, not the person who needed caring for.
So Linda’s mom handled it the way women did back then. Quietly. Alone. Without telling the people she loved most.
Eight Years Later
The cancer came back eight years later.
This time it had metastasized. It was all over her body.
Linda’s mom went through a bone marrow transplant. It was brutal. And it didn’t work.
She died from breast cancer. And the experience was so traumatic for the whole family that Linda made herself a promise right there.
She was going to become an advocate for breast cancer survivors. Because the only real relief her mom found during that entire ordeal was the American Cancer Society. She went to support groups. She modeled the turbans when she lost her hair from chemo. She joined Reach to Recovery. She had a place where she could talk about it freely.
So when Linda graduated from college and became a reporter, she suddenly had a platform. And she knew what to do with it.
A Platform and a Purpose
For the next 30 years, Linda showed up.
She spoke at fundraisers for the American Cancer Society. She modeled in runway shows. She used her growing presence in Tampa Bay to raise awareness and money for breast cancer.
And then, many years later, she got diagnosed with breast cancer herself.
But her diagnosis was different from her mom’s. Because Linda had been advocating for herself in a way her mom never did.
Starting in her 30s, Linda insisted on getting mammograms. Even when doctors said she was too young. Even when insurance companies said they wouldn’t pay. She just found another doctor and argued with the insurance until they agreed.
She was relentless about it. Self-advocacy. Standing up for herself. Not accepting “no.”
And because she’d been getting those mammograms year after year, the radiologist could compare the images. So when a cluster of calcifications showed up, they caught it early.
Stage 0 DCIS. Ductal carcinoma in situ. Just beginning to break out of the duct. It hadn’t even become a full tumor yet.
Dancing With the Devil Once
The doctors told her a lumpectomy would probably be fine. She could get just that one breast treated, and she’d likely be okay.
But Linda remembered something her mom taught her. Even when the cancer came back eight years later for her mom, it was aggressive. It was sneaky. It was ultimately fatal.
“I only want to dance with this devil once,” Linda says. “And I know it’s aggressive and I know it’s extreme. But I’m going to find a doctor who will do a double mastectomy.”
Everyone thought she was crazy. A double mastectomy for stage 0? That was aggressive. That was extreme. Why would you do that?
But Linda had watched her mom. She knew what cancer could do.
She went and found a doctor who would do it. She went to her insurance company with fifteen years of mammogram images showing the progression of the changes in her tissue. She basically said: “Look. You can wait until this becomes full-blown cancer and costs you way more in treatment. Or we can do this now.”
The insurance company agreed to pay for it.
And 15 years ago, Linda had a double mastectomy in her early 40s.
She’s still here. She’s healthy. And her mom’s cancer came back at eight years.
“I really feel like I made the right decision,” she says.
Two Kinds of Advocacy
There’s self-advocacy and then there’s mission-before-self advocacy.
Linda’s learned both.
Self-advocacy is what she teaches women now. Stand up for yourself. Fight for yourself. If you have a gut feeling something’s wrong, find the doctor who will listen. Don’t accept no from anyone. Not doctors. Not insurance companies. Not the system.
“I say women because I think you men tend to maybe not go to the doctor as much as women do. But I do think you don’t have problems speaking up for yourselves and fighting for yourselves,” she says. “It’s more of a problem for women.”
But mission-before-self is different. It’s about putting something bigger than yourself in front of you. Like helping others. And when you do that, two things happen. Number one, it helps you heal. Number two, it takes the spotlight off you and your problems and your pain. And suddenly your life becomes so much more peaceful and gratifying.
“If you put something of bigger importance in front of you like helping others, number one it’s going to help you heal. Number two it takes the spotlight off me, me, me, me, me. And you’ll find that your life becomes so much more peaceful and gratifying when you start putting mission before self.”
Not Saving the World
Linda’s not trying to save the world from cancer. She’s not trying to cure it.
She’s trying to help one woman at a time get a mammogram.
It sounds simple. But it matters.
She has a friend who used to work in TV. She got laid off. Got divorced. Lost her insurance. And she couldn’t afford a mammogram.
She was probably embarrassed to ask Linda for help. But Linda has been raising money through something called Shoot for a Cure, and that money goes directly to the AdventHealth Breast Care Center where she was diagnosed. It pays for mammograms for women who are uninsured or underinsured.
Linda put that into action. Her friend went and got the mammogram. Everything was fine.
Since she started this work, Shoot for a Cure has raised $250,000. That’s 250,000 dollars that’s gone directly to women who couldn’t afford to get screened.
“I’m not going to stroke a check for $500,000,” she says. “But I think this is what I can do. And I can do it one mammogram at a time for one woman who cannot afford it for whatever reason.”
The Woman at Dinner
Fifteen years ago, Linda was at a doctor’s appointment when a woman in the waiting room recognized her.
The woman asked the doctor if she could say hello to Linda. So Linda came out and met her. Listened to her story. Gave her a hug. Gave her some advice.
Fast forward fifteen years.
Linda’s at dinner when a woman approaches her. It’s the same woman from the waiting room all those years ago.
“Thank you,” the woman says. “It made quite an impression on me.”
Linda didn’t remember her. She’s been on the air in Tampa for thirty years. She doesn’t remember everybody she’s touched. But that woman remembered. And Linda’s kindness, Linda’s attention, Linda’s presence in that moment, had stayed with her for fifteen years.
“Again, it goes back to the more you give, the more you get,” Linda says. “How awesome is that, that in a time of her need, I could help her. And not just my friends, but someone I don’t know. And have that kind of impact. That’s really a great thing that I’m truly grateful for.”
The Author
By night, Linda is something completely different.
By day, she’s an anchor at Fox 13. She tells real stories about real people. Stories with consequences. Stories that matter.
By night, she writes thrillers. Under the pen name Linda Bond (her mom’s maiden name).
Her first book came about because she was sitting at the anchor desk reading a story about adventure vacations. Skydiving. Swimming with sharks. Underground cave diving. All inherently dangerous things.
She turned to her co-anchor and said, “What if somebody was using the adventure vacation to kill people? If you died skydiving or swimming with sharks, no one would think it was murder. You’re signing your life away anyway.”
Her co-anchor said, “I would read that book.”
So she wrote Alive at Five.
Her second series is about a serial killer. And the lead protagonist is a reporter in Tampa. Because Linda’s life naturally bleeds into her fiction.
“I’m a storyteller,” she says. “That’s what I am. There’s really very little difference between the two. I just have to get the stories right by day because they’re about real people and they have real life consequences. And at night, I can just make whatever up.”
Five Kids and an Open Heart
Linda didn’t really want kids at first.
She was career-driven. All in on her work. Then she met her husband in her early 30s. He had two kids.
She became a stepmother first. Then she had two biological kids with him. Then they adopted one of his relatives from Cuba.
Five kids total. Not all from the same biology. But all five are hers.
“People when I say that and they look at me, they go, ‘You have five kids,’” she says. “Yes, I do not know that everybody knows that about me.”
And when her daughter is old enough, she becomes a pilot for Delta. Linda and her husband will be able to fly standby for free. When she retires from TV, they want to just show up at the airport with a carry-on, fly first class to wherever there’s an opening, and figure it out once they get there.
Japan. Vietnam. Thailand. Places with cultures so different from the United States. Places that are beautiful.
“It will be such an adventure,” she says.
The Dream That Matters
If money and time and institutional gatekeeping were off the table, what’s the one thing Linda would do?
“I’d like to see there be a cure for cancer,” she says. “And if it’s not a cure, maybe something like insulin was for diabetes. A way maybe to live longer with a treatment that is not so harsh.”
She watched her mom go through a bone marrow transplant. “It was horrid. And then she died anyway.”
But Linda’s been following a local researcher named Dr. Tebby who’s trying to come up with a vaccine for childhood leukemia. What if there was a genetic test that could show a baby was likely to get leukemia? And then they could give them a vaccine to prevent it?
“Wouldn’t that be awesome?” Linda says. “Wouldn’t that be a better way?”
If Linda had $500,000 to give, that’s where it would go. To researchers who are trying to prevent cancer or treat it in a way that doesn’t almost kill you in the process.
Favorite Things
Hot pink is Linda’s favorite color. Her whole closet is full of it. Because pink is for breast cancer. And hot pink makes a statement.
Her co-anchors at Fox 13 make fun of her because she wears it constantly. But she doesn’t care. Hot pink is her color.
Eighty’s rock and roll is her soundtrack. Bon Jovi. Guns N’ Roses. Queen. That whole era. When you turn on music in Linda’s car, it’s probably an 80s playlist.
Her bucket list includes Japan and Vietnam and Thailand. Places that feel different. Places with different cultures.
And one thing most people don’t know about her is that she came to motherhood in a non-traditional way. Stepmother. Adoptive mother. Biological mother. All five kids are hers in the way that matters most.
Connect With Linda
You can find Linda in two very different places:
On TV and Social Media:
Find her at Fox 13’s Linda Hurtado on all social media platforms
30 years of anchoring the news in Tampa Bay
As an Author:
Author Linda Bond on social media
lindabond.com for her thriller novels
Her books Alive at Five and the serial killer series
She’s also very involved with:
Final Thoughts
Linda’s story teaches something really important. The trauma that happened to her mom didn’t have to repeat.
It could have. The cancer could have come back for Linda too. The aggressive double mastectomy could have been seen as overkill.
But it wasn’t. Because Linda listened to her body. Because she advocated for herself. Because she didn’t accept no from anyone. And because she trusted her gut about what that aggressive cancer could do.
Thirty years later, she’s still here. She’s still on the news. She’s still writing thrillers. She’s still raising money for mammograms for women who can’t afford them. She’s still sitting down with women who need to hear that they matter. That their lives matter. That they’re not alone.
“The more you give, the more you get,” Linda says.
That’s not just advocacy. That’s a life lived with purpose.
If you’ve had breast cancer, or you love someone who has, Linda’s work is still happening. She’s still showing up. Still advocating. Still using her platform to help women get screened, get treated, get heard.
And if you haven’t had your mammogram this year, maybe Linda’s story is your reminder. Stand up for yourself. Don’t accept no. Your life depends on it.
