While teaching a time management course, Ray Hartjen made a timeline of his life. One horizontal line stretched out across a piece of paper, the ends signifying birth and death.
He placed himself in the middle.
When Hartjen was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2019 — a treatable but incurable blood cancer — he moved himself much closer to the right end of the page, the end that signified death.
Hartjen started receiving treatment in northern California at Stanford’s cancer facilities before moving to Orange County last year with his wife to be closer to their daughter. At the same time of the move, his line of treatment had stopped working.
He turned to City of Hope.
The top-five ranked cancer center had opened regional clinics in Orange County in 2020, but its main campus was located in Duarte. Many patients, like Hartjen, have received the treatment they could from these regional clinics and made the commute to their more expansive center in Los Angeles County.
But by the end of 2025, Orange County residents — and any person looking to be treated by City of Hope — will have fewer miles to travel. They can visit City of Hope’s new cancer specialty hospital located in Irvine.
On Friday, June 6, the president of City of Hope, Annette Walker, received the keys to the newly finished hospital. The key ceremony was part of its “This is Hope” celebration, in which 300 cancer survivors treated by the City of Hope were in attendance.
“It’s just a very emotional feeling in our quest to fulfill the promise we made to this community that we would bring advanced cancer care and cancer trials that can make all the difference in the world,” Walker said in an interview.
After 34 months of construction and over 1 million hours of combined work, the hospital is entering its “activation stage” starting Monday morning, June 9.
Equipment will be brought in and tested, furniture will be arranged and designers will make the inside of the hospital match the completeness of the outside.
While Friday’s ceremony was to recognize cancer survivors and the completion of construction, City of Hope is planning to open the hospital to its patients the first week of December.
City of Hope has hired 40 cancer experts for its Lennar Foundation Cancer Center outpatient facility and is in the process of hiring 50 more physicians and a staff of 700 people in its adjacent hospital.
“What a blessing it is to bring this much cancer expertise to Orange County,” Dr. Ed Kim, the physician-in-chief, said.
City of Hope has already served 37,000 patients in Orange County. The hospital is looking to continue the care of its current patients and is accepting new patients, from those who have not yet been diagnosed to those ringing the bell once their treatment is completed.
At the key ceremony and survivorship celebration — which also celebrated National Cancer Survivor Month — guests participated in a simultaneous bell-ringing, signifying the completion of their treatments along with highlighting a sense of community at City of Hope. Each guest also had their time to shine by walking down a blue carpet with their loved ones.
“We only exist to create survivors,” Walker said. “They’re the royalty today on the blue carpet.”
Upon completion of its interior, the new hospital will feature 73 beds and two family suites for its patients. Four of the largest operating rooms in the country will include robotic and digital equipment.
“Our job as cancer experts is not to practice the standard of care,” Kim said. “Our job is to continue to redefine the new standards of care, and that attitude is why we are curing more people.”
In addition to its innovation, the hospital is designed to help calm the minds and spirits of its patients.
“It doesn’t feel like a hospital,” Walker said. “It’s meant to say, take your blood pressure down. We got you. Relax.”
“They should feel confident that we’ll do whatever it takes to take great care of them and that they’ll have access to new medicines, medical trials and really the most cutting-edge treatments,” said Dr. Nishan Tchekmedyian, the deputy physician-in-chief.
Even still, a cancer diagnosis is often overwhelming.
Leslie Bruce was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer on her daughter’s sixth birthday.
Overwhelmed with the thought of not being there for the next birthday, she searched for the next steps she had to take. A week later, she had her first call with her breast surgeon from City of Hope.
“I firmly believe that if you have cancer, you have to go to a cancer hospital,” Bruce said. “When you go to a place that just does cancer, where all their research is in cancer, where all of their fundraising goes to cancer research and treatments and support, they understand it.”
Bruce, a bestselling author of “You Are a (Expletive) Awesome Mom,” rang the bell alongside other survivors at the ceremony on Friday.
Aside from treatment, Bruce said City of Hope also gave her new friends, family and a chance at more time with those she loves, including her now 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.
“My friends at City of Hope were not going to let me go,” Bruce said in her speech at Friday’s survivorship event.
For Hartjen, it’s not about surviving, but actually living, that City of Hope helps him do, he said.
“Hope,” the theme of Friday’s event, symbolizes the mission of this new hospital, said Walker.
“It always brings promises of a brighter day,” Walker said. “When you have that, sometimes that gives you what you need to fight. Hope is one of the best words in the English language.”