Elayna Charboneau never ceases to amaze her mother.

Like most kindergarteners, she loves to sing and dance and play outside.

What tends to get Wendy Charboneau’s attention more, however, are the uncanny traits displayed by her 6 year old.

There’s a confidence and determination about her, shown in her love of learning and reading books, and an “aggressiveness and fearlessness” that surface when she’s chasing a ball on the soccer field.

“She’s definitely our little miracle,” Wendy Charboneau said.

Elayna Charboneau is one of the more unlikely participants one would expect to see taking part in the survivor lap that will commence activities at the Relay for Life of Whidbey Island Friday night in Oak Harbor.

She can’t remember anything about the surgery to remove a cancerous tumor about the size of a small baked potato on her kidney at 13 months of age. But she’s grown wise and curious enough to begin to understand what it means to wear a purple shirt that symbolizes the survivors who join her. The annual event that raises money for the American Cancer Society, increases awareness, inspires survivors and remembers those who have passed as a result of the disease.

Wendy Charboneau said it wasn’t until her daughter was about 4 that she started relating the large scar in her midsection to a disease she was previously unable to fully grasp.

Relay for Life in her hometown of Oak Harbor helped provide a bridge in that understanding.

“I think it’s an opportunity for her to realize she’s not alone,” Wendy Charboneau said. “All of these people in the purple shirts had to be poked at and prodded at also.”

The Charboneau family is part of a fundraising team at Relay for Life that calls itself “Heroes Helping Heroes.”

The team is made up of present and past military members and their families, largely connected to Oak Harbor Naval Hospital.

Wendy Charboneau and her husband Nathan were both active duty hospital corpsmen and instructors stationed at Great Lakes Naval Hospital in the Chicago area when cancer crept into their youngest child’s life.

The parents noticed changes in their daughter and took her into see a pediatrician in Chicago.

An ultrasound determined a mass on her kidney and three days later, she had surgery at Milwaukee Children’s Hospital to remove the tumor.

It was determined to be adrenocortical cancer, a rare disease that forms in the outer layer of the adrenal glands that rest atop each kidney.

The surgeon warned Elayna’s parents afterward to try not to be overly alarmed about the 8-inch incision.

She told them the most significant news was that tumor peeled off easily and surgeons were able to remove all the lymph nodes around the area.

To add to the good news, no chemotherapy or radiation treatment was recommended.

“It took like a week and a half and that kid was running around like nothing happened,” Wendy Charboneau said.

Elayna recently reached the five-year milestone with no recurrences of cancer.

That anniversary means the frequency of blood tests and chest x-rays are reduced to once a year.

“She’s a great little girl,” said Heather Buenaventura, a close family friend and cancer survivor. “She’s very loving and considerate of other people.

“She likes to be the center of attention.”

There’s no shortage of that in the Charboneau family where Elayna is the youngest of six children.

The family is grateful for the medical staff that cared for her and her health, her mother said.

“She doesn’t remember it,” Wendy Charboneau said. “We tell her that she was very lucky and by God’s grace she only had to have surgery to take it out.”

And each day her mother continues to be amazed.