Not a day passes in Skyway without someone invoking the name of Bridgette Hempstead. But her spirit isn't merely remembered. It shows up in the conversations between neighbors on front porches. It animates the organizing meetings in libraries and churches. It breathes through the work of Cierra Sisters, the cancer survivor support organization she founded nearly three decades ago after her own diagnosis. And her name will be resurrected again this Saturday, July 19, during the ninth annual Wellness on the Block event.
The celebration of Bridgette's legacy unfolding in Skyway, a long-overlooked, unincorporated corner of King County without a hospital, a permanent clinic, or consistent political representation, feels nothing short of poetic justice. Skyway has been asked, time and again, to endure invisibility, to persist in the absence of infrastructure, to survive with little and be grateful for less. Bridgette saw this reality not as a sentence, but as a summons. And she answered it time and again. She refused to let neglect define her community.
"She only had two shoulders," her daughter, Dee Scott, told me. "But now, collectively, we've got six." Scott, the Cierra Sisters board president, has joined her sisters, Shayla and Shaprit, in continuing to operate the nonprofit. What they carry isn't just Bridgette's work — it's her will. And in doing so, they remind us that true inheritance isn't defined by what we receive, but by what we choose to uphold. It's not blood that makes the burden sacred. It's love.
What began as a modest gathering of survivors in Rainier Beach's indoor gymnasium nearly a decade ago has grown into a full-scale, block-wide event centered at the newly opened Skyway Resource Center. There will be food vendors, musical performances, kids' activities, and Vibe Bingo with numbers being replaced by songs on a bingo card for participants to dance to. Volunteers will also distribute over 1,000 "life-saving bags" door-to-door, each filled with practical health information, care resources, and a stark reminder: You matter.
A need for such an affirmation to be hand-delivered says something damning about our broader health care system. As Scott reminded me, even longstanding cancer research partners like Fred Hutch have recently been pushed to dismantle their DEI efforts under federal pressure. "The funding is being cut from every direction," she said. "But that's only made our work feel more urgent." One might reasonably ask what becomes of care in a country that systemically refuses to value Black and Brown lives beyond rhetorical gestures and monthlong campaigns. Bridgette answered that question with her life: You build your own institutions. You name your own truths. You gather your daughters and tell them: We will save us.
But this isn't a story solely about survival or social heroism. It's about what we owe to one another. If Bridgette was a symbol of anything, it was relationality. In short: the stubborn, loving belief that our lives are entangled, that liberation is never done individually, but collectively. Jeannie Williams, a Skyway resident and Cierra Sister, described meeting Bridgette for the first time during her own breast cancer treatment. "She didn't know me," Williams said, "but she showed up at my door with a blanket, a book, and a candle." Bridgette wasn't just doing outreach; she was making a theological argument about presence. That we show up for one another not because it is easy or strategic or fundable, but because it is right.
This is why events like Wellness on the Block cannot be seen as auxiliary or symbolic. They are infrastructural. They are the infrastructures we build when the state has abdicated its responsibility. Skyway has no hospital, but it has Cierra Sisters. It has organizers like Williams and Scott, who understand that justice is not an abstract set of principles. It is resource distribution and care delivered without precondition.
Yet, even this stunning display of grassroots power is vulnerable to erasure. We are living in an era where the stories of Black and Brown people are not just marginalized but actively scrubbed from the national narrative. Bridgette's work, her refusal to let Skyway go unnoticed, is part of a longer Black tradition of insisting on visibility not as vanity, but as political necessity. "Skyway used to be completely ignored," Williams told me. "But now we've got a resource center. We're working on affordable housing. A community center. Programs for our youth and elders. We're not just working on it, and we're winning at it."
Winning, yes, but against long odds. And with little institutional backing. That's why Skyway cannot afford to be modest about what it has built. Nor should it. This is not a footnote to King County's story. It's a corrective. A vision of what community care can look like when it is driven not by profit or performance, but by proximity and accountability. As Williams — who is also the land, housing, and development manager for the community empowerment group Skyway Coalition — put it, "This event is just the beginning. Bridgette's legacy is alive. And it can, and should, be carried into other communities."
Saturday, July 19, 2025
Blockwalk bag distribution: 9:30–11:30 a.m.
Festival (featuring Vibe Bingo and food vendors): 12:00–3:00 p.m.
Location for both events: Skyway Resource Center, 12610 76th Ave. S., Seattle, WA.
Editors' Note: Bridgette Hempstead served as the South Seattle Emerald's board vice president in the early days of the organization.
Marcus Harrison Green is the South Seattle Emerald's editor-at-large.
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