Bright future: a cancer survivor finds his place in the sun.(skin cancer)(Brief Article)

It was a case of making a mountain out of a mole--or so it may have seemed to Shaun Hughes, as the doctor examined the mole on his back for cancer. Just three months earlier, another physician had assured Hughes he was the "picture of health."

And why not? Hughes was 26 years old, a wind surfer and skier, and his future had endless possibilities when he finished Harvard Business School, where he was entering his second year.

"There's nothing wrong with your mole," the doctor said. "But let me make sure."

Hughes had only consented to the physical examination to please his friend, Nancy Leddy, who'd been dealing with malignant melanoma--skin cancer. She'd spotted his suspicious mole one day while they were swimming. That he might have skill cancer was an impossible idea to Hughes. He'd grown up in Seattle--rainy Seattle--and while he'd maintained the California boy bronzed look during the summers, he surely wasn't exposed to much sun during the region's long, wet winters.

But suddenly Hughes' life changed when the doctor began examining another mole. After a moment, he said, "It's malignant."

The mole was a textbook example of melanoma: large, and without a defining edge or consistent color. The doctor told Hughes he would have been dead within the year, had Leddy not insisted on the exam. That was on a Friday. The next Tuesday surgeons at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York completely removed the malignancy.

Hughes survived, but Leddy didn't. In 1984, a year after his surgery, She lost her battle with cancer. She was just 35. "Nancy was a star, a guiding light for so many people with her boundless energy," Hughes says.