When Anita Tran – a Vietnamese American born in Santa Ana – was first diagnosed with stage IV neuroendocrine carcinoma at the age of 21 and given a life expectancy of three to five years she felt like an alien in her body.

Now, she has taken that feeling to create a symbol of hope to show others battling cancer they are not alone and to spread awareness about the disease through her alien-themed artwork and its central character, Apollo the Alien.

“I created him to be whoever, whatever I want him to be and as a symbol of all of us, that as a cancer patient, we may feel isolated, and nobody might feel exactly the same way, but that’s what makes Apollo the Alien, an alien,” said Tran, now 25 and still living in Santa Ana.

The name Apollo stems from NASA’s spaceflight program that landed t

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