Some stories, you just know they’re going to turn out all right.

They’re sad, their outlook is terrible, but you know they’ll get better.

There’s got to be a surprise happy ending, you think.

Because I hadn’t heard Jill Costello’s story before, I had thought I was listening to that kind of tale Saturday morning at crew practice.

Costello seemed like she had everything going for her. A coxswain for one of the top crew programs in the country, she led her California Golden Bears boat to a fourth-place finish at NCAAs three years in a row—twice in the varsity four and once in the first varsity eight.

So when I heard about the part where she got stage IV lung cancer, I figured she would have to recover, or that she must have already recovered.