Rey Sotelo with Dave Tozer’s custom Roadmaster, donated by his estate to the HOPE raffle. Photo by Robert Eliason.
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Rey Sotelo with Dave Tozer’s custom Roadmaster, donated by his estate to the HOPE raffle. Photo by Robert Eliason.
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Lea este artículo en español aquí.
In 2017, after being diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer and given only six months to live, retired San Jose police officer Dave Tozer refused to just accept his prognosis. Instead, he approached Hollister Powersports owner Rey Sotelo with the idea of starting a charity event to fund research into the disease that would take his life seven years later.
The HOPE Motorcycle Rally has grown from its first small event in Minden, Nevada, which grossed more than $20,000, to a three-day gathering being held Sept. 25-27 at Lake Tahoe.
This year’s event features a charity dinner at the Golden Nugget Casino and Hotel, an auction and the chance to win one of two grand prizes: a custom Sport Chief donated by Indian Motorcycle and Tozer’s own custom Roadmaster, donated by his estate.
“I think what we’re doing with this rally has real meaning in the motorcycle community,” Sotelo said. “It’s just not how shiny my bike is or how cool my paint job is. You might be saving lives here, and nothing is more important than that.”
Initially founded to combat prostate cancer, the rally has expanded to include ovarian cancer, the disease that killed Sotelo’s mother.
So far, fundraising is on track to exceed last year’s results, which yielded $110,000 in donations split evenly between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered (FORCE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to ovarian cancer research.
“My mother’s prayer was, ‘I want to live long enough to see a cure,’” Sotelo said. “We’re not there yet, but we are getting there. You still have to take it very seriously.”
The rally’s motto, “Cancer Does Not Care,” reflects the relentless nature and the stark statistics of the disease. In 2024, more than 299,000 men in the U.S. were diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 35,250 died from it. The prognosis for ovarian cancer survival is even more severe: last year, 19,680 women were diagnosed, and there were 12,740 deaths.
Dr. Paul Percival from Hollister Family Medicine said that the disparity in diagnosis versus mortality rates between men and women is partly due to the challenge of detecting ovarian cancer, which often goes undiagnosed until it’s too advanced for effective treatment.
“Ovarian cancer spreads very quickly at an early stage,” he said. “And there’s a chance we may never find a test that is good at picking it up. The rate of false positives is enormous, and physicians are desperate for an accurate test.”
Percival said the most effective way for a woman to help her physician assess her risks is to be prepared to provide a detailed family history, which may aid in early detection and treatment.
“I’ll get things like, ‘My mother died of something and I don’t know what it was,’” Percival said. “If that person were able to find out mom died of ovarian cancer, okay, now we need to really start looking at that patient a lot closer.”
The odds for men are better, Percival said, because prostate cancer grows more slowly and is more common in older adults, so “men may die with it, but most will die of something else.
“You really want to focus your screening efforts there,” he said. “That is where there seems to be a small survival benefit. You have to look at family history risk as well as ethnicity, like if a close relative had it or you are African-American.”
Sotelo speaks from experience on the subject: he started testing when he was 60 after gaining awareness of the disease. Within a few years, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer after his Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) level, one of the indicators of the disease, began to creep upwards from the normal range of 0.0 to 2.5 nanograms per milliliter.
“My doctor told me I should have started 10 years earlier,” he said. “I started testing on my birthday every year. It went from zero to one to two. Then I hit three. And then the three went to a six. And within six months, it went to about 8.5.”
Following a biopsy, which established that the disease was present, Sotelo went through a course of brachytherapy, a surgical procedure in which radioactive seeds are implanted directly into the prostate gland to kill cancer cells, and intravenous vitamin C supplements.
“After I had the surgery,” he said, “I was under six. I just had my last test three months ago, and I’m where I should be. I have had no side effects, and now, a little over three years after the surgery, I have no symptoms. None at all.”
Sotelo has been working to spread awareness of the diseases, particularly to the biker community, which is more resistant to the message.
“There is this feeling of ‘We’re invincible,’” Sotelo said. “They might care, but they do not want to face the reality of it. They think, “We have symptoms and we’re tough guys. So, we just live through the symptoms, right?’”
Sotelo said he has been accused of wearing new acquaintances out through his cancer advocacy, beginning conversations by asking,”How old are you? And have you ever had a PSA test?” rather than asking what they are riding or where they have been.
“For me,” he said, “it’s very energizing. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t talk about this. I really care about my friends and my family, who are everything to me. So, I want them to be aware of what I went through and not go through it themselves.”a
Information on the Hope Motorcycle Rally is available on the organization’s website and Facebook page.
Rey Sotelo with the custom Sport Chief donated by Indian Motorcycle Corp. Photo by Robert Eliason.
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Rey Sotelo with the custom Sport Chief donated by Indian Motorcycle Corp. Photo by Robert Eliason.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C225&quality=89&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?fit=780%2C585&quality=89&ssl=1″ src=”https://aanwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM.jpg” alt=”Rey Sotelo with the custom Sport Chief donated by Indian Motorcycle Corp. Photo by Robert Eliason.” class=”wp-image-131632″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&quality=89&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C225&quality=89&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C576&quality=89&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1152&quality=89&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1536&quality=89&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C900&quality=89&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=800%2C600&quality=89&ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=600%2C450&quality=89&ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C300&quality=89&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=200%2C150&quality=89&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1500&quality=89&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C585&quality=89&ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C530&quality=89&ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-scaled.jpg?w=2340&quality=89&ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/benitolink.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Photo-Sep-22-2025-10-56-15-AM-1024×768.jpg?w=370&quality=89&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px”>
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