Some stories open wounds while others heal them.
This story does both. Coming undone has a way of rebuilding you—simplifying your faith while expanding it, holding a mirror up to the world and reframing it, settling all the matters that once unmoored us.
And for Angela Hernandez, this process unfolded not in silence or solitude, but in the very environment that helped shape her.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever have the courage to share such a personal part of my life in a professional setting, but I’d be lying if I said this industry wasn’t a part of the strength that helped me at such a challenging time of my life,” Angela, Vice President of Marketing, Trinity Fruit Company, shares with me.
Angela’s story is a reminder that while this industry helped shape her strength, its ever-moving current doesn’t just carry us forward—it sometimes takes the reins and sweeps us into its momentum, whether we’re ready or not. Yet in that motion, we often find our purpose.
She knows this rhythm intimately.
“Life can get very busy in our industry, and it can go very fast. From being at trade shows, in meetings, at a dinner, having a cocktail, or on a plane, it can almost seem never-ending,” she acknowledges. “And, for some of us, it’s even more than that. The momentum is fueled by new product launches, design strategies and changes, packaging innovations, new plantings, weather changes, inflation, you name it.”
But even the most agile among us are not immune to disruption.
Or what might feel more like a reckoning.
"Being a strategist is being proactive and planning what you can control. It’s having a plan in place and a plan if that plan doesn’t work. In this case, I had no plan but to trust in a God who knew every detail of every plan that involved my health and care."
Angela Hernandez, Vice President of Marketing, Trinity Fruit Company
“In 2023, I was in New York for the International Fresh Produce Association’s Produce Executive Development Program, hosted by Cornell University. I received a call asking if I could come in to further look into a scan I had just taken,” Angela begins. “The week after my return home, I did just that. Within three days, I had another follow-up appointment, and I was given the news that would be the most shocking of my life so far: ‘We found that you have breast cancer.’ I was with my mom while my father waited outside, walking my dog, Miles. At that very moment, all the words were just noise, and everything blurred.”
Moments like these can fragment the self. We can feel foreign to ourselves—reduced to medical terms, layered definitions, and oncology jargon. We risk becoming understated emotional statistics, overstated technical implications—flattened into something clinical, like the pages of a medical journal. But, despite it all, Angela didn’t feel shelved.
The oncology team moved fast, and Angela found herself in a role reversal. She suddenly identified with the product she had so often manicured, strategized, and shaped—and everything around her was moving fast to fix this issue.
Where she once had exercised so much control, she now had to surrender it.
“Being a strategist is being proactive and planning what you can control. It’s having a plan in place and a plan if that plan doesn’t work. In this case, I had no plan but to trust in a God who knew every detail of every plan that involved my health and care. Again, I was walking the talk. I didn’t know what each day held, but I knew who held each day,” Angela emphasizes. “This realization changed my life and is a wonderful reminder to me today that amid the day-to-day, we ultimately have no control. Being the focus of strategy taught me to ask the questions I was afraid to ask. That being weak is a great strength, and that being vulnerable is what humanity seeks. We live in such a tough world today. You never know what someone else is going through. But, if you can remain real, maintain a heart that is raw, you might just meet the needs of others around you and yourself.”
With that Angela energy we all so cherish, she leaned into her spiritual foundation, recognizing there was much she didn’t know. So, she turned to what she did: her faith and her power.
“After receiving the surprising news, I did what I knew best. First and foremost, pray, because that’s what I do,” Angela remembers. “Second, strategize. Because that’s also what I do. I’m a planner, I’m pretty organized, and I usually tackle things, and I am a force to be reckoned with when I’m on a mission.”
Angela took a seat at the table for her own treatment plan, taking into account the medical, emotional, and physical journey ahead of her. If you let it, fear can eat away at our choices till there is only one left. Angela would not let it.
“Building a support system was my next move, both personally and professionally. After discussing it with my family and very close-to-home friends, I reached out to about 10 women in our industry and shared the news,” Angela reflects. “I did this with the intention of having a team to help me as I was about to embark on the fight of my life. If you’re going to go to battle, you need an army, and that’s what I had. Not only in my personal life, but professionally.”
Angela was blown away by the community that formed around her. What you put into the universe comes back to you, and Angela’s dedication to the industry, friends, and family she so cherished came back tenfold.
“I learned more about our industry and the company I worked for during this challenging time than at any other point up to this. The support was amazing, and I never fought alone,” Angela recalls. “Trinity Fruit’s Owners, David and Lisa White, stood with me every step of the way. I always hear from people about how great the company I worked for is, but this was the all-knowing part. They didn’t skip a beat with me, and bald as an eagle, they gave me the freedom to do what made me and my life more comfortable, allowing me to improve.”
During the course of Angela’s treatment, she underwent 16 rounds of chemo (five months), 25 rounds of radiation, six surgeries, and, as she tells me, more God running through her blood than she had ever experienced.
In April of 2023, I received an invitation to join a support group on Facebook that Angela had formed. It was managed by Angela and her family and kept us all informed about her journey. She shared her most joyful and vulnerable moments in this safe space she created. Drawing us close to her, you could feel the love, the dynamic ecosystem that breathed life into Angela and that she, in turn, inspired for us.
In the face of our mortality, even in life, we tend to avoid many of these crucial conversations, often relegating them to the realm of the taboo. We hide to protect, but in a way, isolate ourselves from the solutions that help us heal.
In this case, Angela’s community reckoned back. And so did her faith.
"I was about to embark on the fight of my life. If you’re going to go to battle, you need an army, and that’s what I had. Not only in my personal life, but professionally."
“My heart is overflowing with love for this industry! I experienced an overwhelming amount of love from so many people during my journey, and still do today,” Angela tells me before expressing her gratitude for her professional family. “First off, our Trinity Fruit family. Not too many owners pray with you and stand with you in the trenches, but ours do. There wasn’t a week (sometimes only a day or two) that went by without David and Lisa reaching out. I’m grateful to them as leaders and mentors, but most importantly, prayer warriors. They were a HUGE part of my journey. Also, Levon Ganajian, who we recently lost, would FaceTime me at every trade show so I could see my friends. I never got to tell him how much that meant to me. I would sometimes hang up and cry—not sad tears, thankful tears. Thankful that he took the time to think about how I may have felt being away.”
In addition to her immediate work family, many people who worked with Trinity also reached out to Angela, about the progress of her health, and they still do.
“I was very surprised to have had a retailer ask if I was receiving the proper movement in my care and, if I wasn’t, they would love to donate on my behalf to the health care providers to get them to move,” Angela describes. “My cup runneth over!”
Between her faith, her community, her medical team, and a home full of flowers, Angela could not have found more sustenance to fight for her life and for the family she had built.
A special group of women in the industry also created a healing space for Angela during her treatment. Those special individuals became lifelines, gifts that emerged from her already broad circle of friends, as well as from unexpected places.
“Those reading this will know in their hearts who they are. Our marketing posse at the time, Jeri Elsasser and Jackie Nakashian, were and are amazing,” Angela starts off. “They taught me that I can do even harder things, and I don’t have to do them alone. They were always there and never skipped a beat. I have always been a control freak, but they taught me that I could trust them with many moving projects. They held the fort down, and they always made me feel a part of the team even when I was so disconnected. They came with me to one of my chemo appointments and played a huge role in my support system. There was a time that I had to spend some nights in the hospital, and I still remember Jeri rushing to see me after work. This taught me that sometimes you get to work with such wonderful people, but other times you have the privilege to do life with them.”
Angela recently added Anna O’Brien to the Trinity squad, a teammate who joined the company in the fourth quarter with her own amazing and unexpected gifts.
“She fits in perfectly. Anna met me while I was having fun playing with blonde pixie hair and completing a sixth surgery. She has been a blessing to our team. What they each have taught me is that in order for others to grow, we can’t hold on so tight. We have to allow our teammates to make wins too. Collectively, we are the best team there is!” Angela expresses.
Lastly, and far from the least, there is Michele Visser, Vice President, Clean Works.
"Trinity Fruit’s Owners, David and Lisa White, stood with me every step of the way. I always hear from people about how great the company I worked for is, but this was the all-knowing part. They didn’t skip a beat with me."
“Michele and I go back 20 years before this industry was a thing to us. We met at a coffee and candy shop where we both worked, and since then, we have not just been friends, but sisters at heart,” Angela remembers. “Michele was a lifeline, and I love her and her family dearly. I won’t go into the details for the sake of privacy, but the fact that she stood with me and how she did it was remarkable.”
What you learn quickly, speaking with Angela, is that the hard way home is the most beautiful, and for Angela, it was a journey of survival, reevaluation, gratitude, and shifting perspectives.
“I didn’t know the strength I had even existed. I was raised in the church and grew up believing that unfathomable strength did, in fact, exist. That belief turned into knowing. It’s not until you have to ‘walk the talk’ that you learn what that even means,” Angela says, stilling herself for a moment before she continues. “The strength I knew that I had was to never give up, to press into something until it happened, to not let anyone get in my way. A cousin of mine, Cristal, who is very artistic, once drew me a well-known quote by William Shakespeare, ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’ that still hangs in my guest bedroom. It’s the strength I knew as well as the strength others knew of me.”
If you approach Angela from across a trade show floor, a cocktail party, or a fall afternoon, you know she glimmers. It is just a part of her DNA, her presence in the world, her energy. She is a fighter, but also full of love. Her compassion is boundless, and is only surpassed by her light—quiet, steady, and unmistakably hers.
“The faith I have is like the strength I didn’t know I had. It’s greater. To sum up my faith in this experience, I have these words: The joy of the Lord is my strength. I was so full of joy. In the midst of what looked like tragedy on the outside, I was filled with joy, peace, strength, and an abundance of love,” Angela shares. “I was blessed at every chemo appt. I got to meet and pray with some of the bravest women I’ve ever met. I’ll never forget the sweetest words I’d hear from the nurses when they had no idea how awful I was feeling inside. I developed such special relationships with all my doctors, nurses, and surgeons that I attribute to my faith. To me, they were just vessels being used that I was praying for. I prayed for my doctors all the time and still do.”
Angela recalls asking her oncologist, “If I were your daughter, what would you do?”
“When you personalize your care, you get the heart. I did that with all my doctors, and not just prayed for them to help me, but for their families or the care of others,” she says.
That kind of empathy—thinking beyond herself even in the hardest moments—has been a constant in Angela’s story. It didn’t just shape how she faced treatment; it shaped how she emerged from it.
Much has changed for Angela since her cancer diagnosis and the many surgeries she experienced, as well as the chemo, radiation, and recovery. Each phase reshaped her, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally. The way she moves through life now is different—more intentional, more present, more luminous. It’s not just a new chapter; it’s a beautiful reimagining of who she is and how she chooses to live.
“It changed me in the best ways and continues to shape me every day. It slowed me down to see the blessings that were right in front of me all along. It has allowed me to lead with intention and purpose. To continue to develop relationships to not only make the connection, but to connect personally,” Angela observes. “We have no idea how blessed we all are to work in an industry that embodies the essence of the world’s healthiest lifestyles, one that brings connection to the land, food, and humanity. I hope that my role as a leader inspires others to live a life that encourages and inspires them to live—on purpose.”
Cancer affects more than just one person; it affects a community, and so can one person’s story. May Angela’s story inspire us all. 
