Frank Feliz popped into the main office at Cabrillo High School and asked Kathi Morse if she had seen the cell phone photo he had e-mailed to her.

She had.

Morse, surrounded by friends and co-workers, gave Feliz a big, emotion-filled hug.

"I was attacked by hugs," Feliz said. "There were hugs all around."

Feliz, who is Cabrillo's school gardener, had painted a giant pink ribbon at the 50-yard line on the football field at Huyck Stadium, where Cabrillo was to play Nipomo High on Friday night.

The ribbon recognized that October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

But it was more personal for Feliz - and for Morse, who was diagnosed Monday with breast cancer.

The pink ribbon is special, Morse said.

"It just warmed my heart," she said. "But I am very blessed because I have many people here who love me and care about me - my Cabrillo family."

Feliz, a broad section of hair on the top of his head dyed a dusty pink, stood on the football field hours before kickoff and talked about the news of the past week.

"I did all of this with her in mind. It really hits home now," he said. "I've got other people in my family with cancer, but breast cancer is new to me.

"I felt I needed to reach inside and do something."

To get the pink color, Feliz said, he mixed red paint with the white that is used for the sidelines and yard lines. Then he and Russ Samaniego, groundsman for Lompoc High School, applied the pink to an outline created in the center of the field.

The ribbon will be there for the next four weeks, including the Big Game between Cabrillo and Lompoc next month, Feliz said.

Morse said more tests must be done before she knows how her cancer will be treated.

"I'm still a little numb. I didn't see it coming," she said. No one else in her family has ever been diagnosed with breast cancer, she added.

Morse said being diagnosed was accidental - her good fortune. She had stumbled and fallen against her door at home and there was a suspicious discharge that she assumed was related to her shoulder injury. The injury did spur her to visit her doctor.

"It was luck," said Morse, who is secretary to Assistant Principal Schel Brown.

The significance that the diagnosis was made this month didn't escape her.

Breast cancer is second only to skin cancer in women in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.

An estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer in American women were expected to be diagnosed this year and an estimated 40,170 women were expected to die from the disease this year, according to the cancer society.

There are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States.

Friday afternoon at

Huyck Stadium, Feliz and Samaniego admired the ribbon, which Feliz described as "Pepto pink."

"It's getting brighter as the sun goes down," Samaniego said.

"You wait until the lights are on!'' Feliz warned.

Samaniego agreed, nodding. "It's going to be fluorescent pink."

Morse said she would be there to see it.