After amputation, no counselor came. Then came the Valkyries.

The story of 68-year-old Cynthia Cheak, who lost her left leg and became a fixture in the Golden State Valkyries' Ballhalla crowd, is being told as a sports feel-good. But the part worth sitting with is the line she said first: not one counselor came to talk to her during 72 days in the hospital.

Cynthia Cheak spent 72 days in the hospital after her amputation. Eleven surgeries. Months of antibiotics that didn’t work, wounds that wouldn’t close, a fall that led to another operation. She was a former personal trainer in Berkeley. She had been active her whole life. She lost her left leg.

“Not one counselor came to talk to me,” she told ABC7 San Francisco. Not one social worker. No one from mental health stepped into what she described as “the disaster that had become her existence.”

That is the sentence this story is actually about.

The rest of the story, as it has been reported, is a sports piece: Cheak, now 68, is a beloved regular at Chase Center, home of the Golden State Valkyries. She shows up in violet sequins, hands out thousands of playoff-themed bracelets, gets stopped at Costco by fans who recognize her, and says the team gave her something to live for after she hit a wall of depression. Guard Kaitlyn Chen signed her prosthetic leg. The Valkyries clinched a playoff berth and coach Natalie Nakase dedicated the game to her. The team is in the WNBA semifinals.

It is a good story. It is also a story that happens because hospitals routinely discharge amputees without mental health support.

What Cheak described, and what it points to

Cheak’s situation was not unusual in its severity. Sepsis with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), a rare clotting disorder, left her unconscious for 11 days. When she woke, her feet were already lost. She was 66 and facing a completely renegotiated relationship with her body and her profession.

What was unusual was how long she waited for psychological care that never arrived during inpatient treatment.

Research consistently documents elevated rates of depression and anxiety in the first year after limb loss. The Amputee Coalition has published extensively on the gap between rates of psychological distress among new amputees and rates of actual referral to mental health services during rehabilitation.

Cheak filled that gap, eventually, with a sports community. The Valkyries began playing four months after she hit what she described as her worst period. She started attending. Her mood improved in the arena. She found purpose in the bracelets, in the ritual of giving things away, in being recognized.

That works. It is genuinely working for her. She still trains dementia patients three days a week and does her own strength work. She has distributed more than 20,000 bracelets. She calls herself an advocate for disabled people.

But “a WNBA expansion team saved her from depression her hospital never treated” is a description of a system failure dressed up as a sports story.

Why community works, when it does

Peer support programs, including the Amputee Coalition’s Peer Visitor Network, have been associated with better adaptation and higher prosthetic acceptance rates. Being around other people who have navigated similar things reduces isolation and provides practical models of what life after limb loss can look like.

What Cheak found at Chase Center is not exactly peer support in the clinical sense. It is something older: a place where she is known, where showing up matters, where other people’s joy is contagious, and where her disability is visible and unremarkable at the same time. She is the bracelet person. She is Cynthia. She has a constituency.

That is not nothing. For a lot of people it is everything.

But it requires access: to a ticket, to transportation, to a venue that is physically navigable, to a city that has a professional sports team at all. Cheak is in the Bay Area. She had the income and mobility to get to Chase Center. Many people coming out of amputations do not.

What this means

If you are recently post-amputation and struggling, the Cynthia Cheak story is worth hearing because it names something real: structured community helps, even when the community is not explicitly therapeutic. Sports venues, faith communities, advocacy groups, adaptive recreation programs, peer visitor networks, any place where you have a regular role and people notice if you are absent, can provide something that clinical care often does not.

It does not mean you have to become a Valkyries fan. It means the question “what gives you somewhere to be?” is worth taking seriously.

If you are not getting mental health support from your rehabilitation team and you are struggling, you can request a referral to a rehabilitation psychologist or ask your care team to connect you with a peer visitor through the Amputee Coalition (1-888-267-5669). The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text if you are in crisis.

The infrastructure Cheak built for herself is real. The gap that made it necessary is also real.

This article draws on general research on post-amputation mental health outcomes for context. It is not a substitute for individualized mental health care. If you are experiencing depression or distress after limb loss, a qualified mental health provider or peer support program can offer support specific to your situation.