Business student battling cancer chases her dreams
This cup of coffee was just a little different. Kiley Lemasters has served customers thousands of cups of coffee as a barista, but in April, the college student and cancer fighter had the red carpet rolled out for her as she poured java inside Missouri’s most unique coffee spot.
Kiley is a coffee enthusiast and aspiring entrepreneur who has been battling brain cancer since 2020. Her goal is to one day open a mobile coffee bus. With the help of her college professor, she got to see what her future might hold through a behind-the-scenes tour of a coffee shop inside a former school bus in Edina.
She’s had a handful of jobs growing up, but Kiley repeatedly comes back to being a barista. “Coffee just helps cultivate this warm and friendly environment,” she says. “People are there to talk and have deep, intentional conversations in a friendly environment.”
Kiley grew up in Kansas City. She was a junior in high school in 2019 when her father was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.
The following summer, just a few weeks after her high school graduation was canceled due to COVID-19, Kiley had a seizure that her doctors eventually traced back to a golf-ball-sized tumor in her brain and her own glioblastoma diagnosis.
“So many people rallied around me,” she says. “I was at North Kansas City Hospital and my mom had told people where our room was. We looked out the window and there were my friends and their parents holding up signs and waving at me from the ground.”
Surgery and rounds of chemotherapy and radiation didn’t immediately show positive results for Kiley. Her father succumbed to his cancer in November 2020 and a few days later doctors told Kiley she likely only had three months to live. At 18 years old, she married her boyfriend, Cole, drew up her will, picked out a casket and planned her funeral.
“I feel like I really started living once I found out I was dying,” she says. “But my story is kind of a miracle story. I didn’t die.”
Her cancer stabilized and while she’s not in remission, Kiley is stable. She gets an MRI every few months to make sure her prognosis hasn’t worsened. As part of her new lease on life, Kiley wanted to take her love of coffee and turn it into owning a coffee bus business. “One thing I can’t get from working as a barista is the management and financials side of the business, so I wanted to learn to run a business for the long run,” she says.
Kiley enrolled in classes at Moberly Area Community College where she was introduced to business instructor William King.
“It was an online class, and I usually have students share a short video about themselves to learn more about them,” William says. “Kiley’s came up and she talked about wanting to open a coffee bus and just asking me to be patient with her because of her condition. I had to Google it to see what it was and knew this was an obstacle we could work to overcome in school.”
As the semester progressed, William recalled hearing Knox County R-1 Superintendent Andy Turgeon talk about the Knox County School Bus Cafe, a retired school bus students converted into a coffee shop in front of the high school in Edina.
“She wanted to open a coffee bus and lo and behold there’s one just a few hours away,” William says.
William and Andy got in touch and scheduled a day for Kiley and Cole to visit in late April and see what her dream could look like one day. They kept it a surprise for Kiley who didn’t know what the trip was for until they arrived and she saw the bus.
“We pulled up to the school and the first thing I saw was the stationary bus and then I saw it was a coffee bus,” Kiley says. “I just kept saying, ‘Is that the surprise? Is that the surprise?’ ”
William, Kiley and Cole got a tour of the entire school before visiting the bus where the students had literally rolled out a red carpet for her. She ordered a drink and checked out the inside of the bus before the students put her to work fulfilling customer orders.
“It was a hands-on learning example,” she says. “It made me realize that my dream is possible. I could see how they use their space to make the drinks and it has been a success. It was a positive experience and has had this ripple effect on me and the things I do.”
Kiley is continuing with classes at MACC as she works as a barista at Toasty Goat Coffee Co. in Columbia. She says that not only has the visit pushed her forward in reaching for her goal, it’s allowed her to share her story and impact others.
“I’ve had people I’ve worked with or babysat for message me and ask me how I’m doing because they didn’t know about my diagnosis,” she says. “We all get down some time or have negative headspace. But interactions like that show the impact we have and how we can make a difference.”