Cape Cod soap star’s inflammatory breast cancer battle inspires new bill

A bill spearheaded by Cape Cod residents aimsto improve education around inflammatorybreast cancer while honoring the impact of a local actress.

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Marnie’s Law is now in its third readingat theMassachusetts State House, with the bill needing approval by July 31 in order to move out of this legislative session. Should it become law, the billwould mandate that undergraduate nursing programs across the state expand their curriculum to include education about inflammatory breast cancer, which typically forms with no visible lumps and often doesn’t appear on standard mammograms.The bill is named after actress Marnie Robidas, known professionally as Marnie Schulenburg anda14th-generation Cape Cod native from Barnstable, who died in 2022 at 37 from stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer following a misdiagnosis.

Robidas’s cancer was, at first, mistakenly diagnosed as mastitis, a breast infection that typically affects breastfeeding individuals,after giving birth to herdaughter in 2019. Doctors didn’t discover her cancer until 2020 when it was terminal. Proponents of Marnie’s Law hopeto help educate nurses on inflammatory breast cancer to avoid future misdiagnoses.

Her father, John Schulenburg, who has led the efforts to pass Marnie’s Law, recalls Robidas saying as she started chemotherapy that she wanted her “journey to make a difference to other people.”

“That’s the basis for me continuing this. I want her life to make a difference,” Schulenburg told the Globe, noting how he would drive his daughter to and from her medical appointments for the two years after she was diagnosed.

A performer since she was a young girl, Robidas would go on to develop a successful career as an actress. She earned a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 2010 for her role on the soap opera “As The World Turns” and appeared on shows including “Royal Pains,” as well as “Blue Bloods,” starring Boston native Donnie Wahlberg.

While Robidas was battling cancer, she began Marnie’s Army, an online group to help spread awareness about inflammatory breast cancer to other women.

“The advocacy all really started with Marnie,” saidZack Robidas, her husband. “Even in the middle of the hardest moment of her life, she wasn’t just thinking about herself. She was thinking about the next mother who might be going through the same thing.”

After her death, Schulenburg wanted to honor Robidas’slife and impact on the Cape Cod community. He started with a memorial bench at her favorite beach, Millway Beach in Barnstable. He then helped launch the annual Marnie’s March on Millway to raise money for cancer research and Cape Cod theater and music.

The idea for Marnie’s Law came about after family friend and Barnstable nativeJoshua Koopman reconnected with Schulenburg following Robidas’s death. He had initially connected with Robidas’s siblings while doing theaterat Barnstable High School together, and was inspired by Schulenburg, a veteran, to join themilitary. When Koopman was overseas in the army, he would always receive holiday and birthday cards from Schulenburg.

Robidas’s pursuit of actinginspired Koopman to do the same. After the army, he went back to school at DeSales University for acting, where Robidas also attended.

“She was kind of like a little sister to me and best friend, and she was the inspiration for me going to acting school and leaving a career behind,” Koopman said. He later moved back to Cape Cod and now owns the popular Pizza Shark restaurant in Harwich, along with its locations in Chatham and Dennis.

After losing contact for a year following Robidas’s death, Koopman reconnected with her familyover games of pool in Schulenburg’s garage. Every Wednesday night, the two would meet to play a few rounds and catch up. Initially, they talked about Koopman’s movies and his work. Over the weeks, the conversations switched to how to do more to honor Robidas’s story.

“That’s kind of where this second phase of it started,” Koopman said. “Just trying to find a way to attack this disease and attack this cancer in a different way in order to carry on her legacy, but also try and save lives any way we could.”

This transformed their weekly pool games into meetings about Marnie’s Law. Koopman joined the board of directors of Marnie’s Army, which Schulenburg had turnedinto a nonprofit to raise money for cancer research, and began working on various fundraising efforts.

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Every May since 2024 Pizza Shark has donated $1 to the nonprofit for every slice of pizza sold throughout the month to honor Robidas’s birth month. This May, they raised $3600, and have raised $10,000 since starting the fundraising efforts three years ago.

Since a Pizza Shark restaurant is located inside the Chatham Orpheum Theater, they have been able to screen Robidas’s movies and host discussions on inflammatory breast cancer to raise awareness and honor her work. They often show the mockumentary “Golden Scallop,” which Koopman, Robidas and her husband, and other Cape locals made together 12 years ago.

Amid strong community support, Schulenburg and Koopman knew that legislation was the next step in order to help save lives.

“At some point, it was decided that the real key to making a difference from Marnie’s journey was in education,” Schulenburg said. “The lack of education is so dire, and the results are so devastating that that’s where we focused.”

Schulenburg and Koopman found support from Barnstablestate representatives Kip Diggs and Hadley Luddy, who co-filed the bill in January 2025.

For Luddy, she connected with the mission from a personal place, having lost her sister-in-law to cancer after a misdiagnosis as well.

“For me, this became not just a matter of filing something that was critical for the future of any woman that’s experiencing this diagnosis, but also really had a personal impact on my own family,” Luddy said.

The bill has so far been met with support across Massachusetts. It passed unanimously in the Committee on Public Health and now sits before the House Committee on Bills in the third reading.

“With serious medical conditions like breast cancer, time is of the essence, and early detection is crucial to patient outcomes,” Diggs told the Globe in a text message. “This bill has the potential to improve the quality of healthcare for breast cancer patients and save lives.”

Marnie’s Law hasn’t just sparked conversation in Massachusetts. New Jersey introduced a similar bill in December 2025, and Schulenburg has also met with Pennsylvania legislators.

“We’re making much more progress, much more quickly than I could have ever dreamed,” Schulenburg said.

As they wait to see whether the bill will move out of this legislative session, Schulenburg and Koopman are proud to see the awareness and support they’ve generated.

“We’re kind of just two old vets trying to figure out how to attack [this],” Koopman said. “I’m just blessed to be there by his side to witness it.”

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