Chef Bobby Marcotte supports St. Jude in memory of daughter Alanna

Bobby Marcotte of New Hampshire has a tattoo on his right bicep of a gold cancer awareness ribbon being licked by flames and these words: “For Daddy, I hope you love it.” 

He does love it. He loves it because his firstborn daughter, Alanna, created it. 

It sparks conversations about Alanna, who died from cancer in 2014, when she was 13 years old. It sparks conversations about St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®, which he calls a place of hope. It gives him purpose.

Twelve years after Alanna’s death, her father can trace nearly every important part of his life back to the girl who changed him.

His family formed Team PeaceLoveAlanna for the St. Jude Walk in 2013. It has become one of the top teams nationwide, raising approximately $1.4 million. The family also hosts the Alanna Marcotte Memorial Golf Classic, the St. Jude Doubles Charity Disc Golf Event in Memory of Alanna Marcotte, the Alanna Memorial Motorcycle Ride and other events that rally a loving community in her name.

At home, Marcotte’s wife, Stacy, wanted her stepdaughter’s name to be spoken every day and woven into the lives of Alanna’s two younger siblings. Alanna’s books sit on the family shelves. Her clothes are in her siblings’ closets. Her toys are in their toy chests.

Alanna is still part of the family. She is still part of the man her father became.

Alanna is there in Marcotte’s relentless work ethic and his devotion to community and family. She is there in Marcotte’s drive to excellence, which has won him fame as a chef on TV and enduring friendships.

From the day she was born, Alanna changed Marcotte, pushing him forward in life. Twelve years after her death, she still moves him. 

Marcotte was only 17 when he first held Alanna in his arms. She was born in June of 2000.

“He was a young parent. A very young parent,” his mom, Ann Asselin, said. “But he stepped up immediately. It’s like when he became a dad, he was in it one million percent.”

Marcotte put it more simply: “Alanna kind of kicked me in the ass to grow up.”

He needed to grow up quickly. He and Alanna’s mom soon faced a frightening reality: As a newborn, Alanna was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma, a cancer affecting both eyes. 

She had inherited the risk of eye cancer from her dad.

As a baby, he, too, had been diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma. He remembers virtually nothing about the surgery to remove his left eye, the cryotherapy to save his right eye and the checkups at a hospital in New England. 

Like Marcotte, Alanna received successful treatment at a hospital near home. For years, her scans showed no evidence of cancer.  

Life moved forward. Marcotte, who had been around restaurants with his dad since he was 13, rose from dishwasher to kitchen prep to sous chef.

But at home, “We were eating boxed pasta and whatever we could afford at the time,” Marcotte said. “We were just kids on a budget with groceries, and I wasn’t a gourmet chef at that age.”

What Marcotte had was an abundance of time with Alanna. She loved books, and the two would sit and read together. 

“She was his best friend,” Asselin said. “They were inseparable.”

Alanna carried her sketchbook everywhere.

“I’ve got tattoos of her art all over me,” Marcotte said. “She was just such a super talented artist and writer. Academically, she was just amazing.”

She loved sports and movement, from softball and soccer to basketball, ballet and snowboarding. Marcotte coached her soccer team. “Whatever she put her mind to, she was gonna do it and never looked back,” Asselin said.

When Alanna was 10, she started having leg pain and began making trips with her parents to see the pediatrician. Marcotte suspected it was more than growing pains.

Then one day on the soccer field, Alanna kicked the ball and her femur broke.

That fracture revealed a second cancer called osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. At a hospital near home, then 11-year-old Alanna received chemotherapy and limb-sparing surgery to replace her femur with a prosthetic rod. 

When Marcotte broke down, Alanna told him it was OK that she had cancer because she wouldn’t want anyone else to have it.

For more than a year after treatment ended, her scans showed no evidence of cancer.

Then Alanna started feeling pain in her leg again.

In December 2012, when she was 12 years old, they learned her cancer was back. She had tumors throughout her body, including her leg, spine, liver and lungs. 

Alanna was upset, but not for the reason her dad would have expected. She had planned to deliver toys to kids at their local hospital for the holidays. Would they still be able to give gifts to the other kids, even though her cancer was back?

“She was thoughtful and caring. She cared about other people before herself,” Asselin said. “We always say she was like an angel here. She was just such a good kid, always.”

Unfortunately, survival rates for relapsed osteosarcoma remain dismal. As the family considered new treatment options, Marcotte learned Alanna qualified for an immunotherapy clinical trial at St. Jude and obtained a referral. 

Marcotte remembers Alanna sitting in a garden at St. Jude, delighted by the butterflies. 

“There’s just something about St. Jude,” Asselin said. “Families truly only need to focus on their kids and their family. It’s just an incredible place.”

In March 2013, Alanna began a St. Jude clinical trial protocol for a treatment designed to help her immune system recognize and attack her cancer. 

“I was on a journey of hope, and that’s why I love that St. Jude emphasizes hope so much, because it does give you something to fight for,” Marcotte said. 

While the treatment appeared to stop some of her tumors from growing, sadly, her other tumors continued to grow and she had developed some new ones. 

Alanna went back home and continued to receive treatment at her local hospital.

Despite everything, Alanna continued doing well in school and was inducted into the Junior National Honor Society. 

On April 22, 2014, Alanna passed away. It seemed impossible for Marcotte to believe.

Amidst his grief, Marcotte continued with the one thing he knew: restaurants.

In 2016, Guy Fieri featured the Tuckaway Tavern & Butchery, where Marcotte is executive chef, on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Television and restaurant success followed, giving Marcotte an ever-growing platform to talk about Alanna and support St. Jude.

“She was an amazing soul. And we carry on her legacy the way that she would have lived her life — by giving back,” Marcotte said.

Through Fieri, Marcotte has met other chefs who want to help. “Guy Fieri is really invested in who the people are, what their story is and how their hearts are,” Marcotte said.

When Peter Campbell, owner of Red Wagon Pizza in Minneapolis, met Marcotte in 2016 while returning for a Food Network competition, the two chefs bonded over an unlikely topic: spreadsheets. During a bus ride to the filming location, they traded restaurant metrics and operating tips.

Over time, the conversations shifted. Marcotte told him about Alanna and St. Jude.

“At a moment when it feels like a normal human being could have broken and fallen apart, he didn’t, and his lifeline was St. Jude,” Campbell said. “There’s always this vibe of hope that I pick up from him when I hear him talk about St. Jude and Alanna.”

In February of 2025, he visited St. Jude with Marcotte’s family. 

“Bobby has become a best friend,” Campbell said. “It feels weird to say that as a 50-year-old man with gray hair, but he is one of the more important people in my life.”

In the Marcotte home, a family portrait hangs on the wall. Computer editing has created a reality cancer didn’t allow: the whole Marcotte family together at the same time. Alanna stands with her dad, stepmom and two siblings born after she died. It is Marcotte’s favorite picture.

Addi is 11, a redhead like Alanna. She shares her older sister’s sense of humor. 

“A certain look, something she does will remind us of Alanna,” Asselin said.

Caiden, who is 5, loves hearing stories about Alanna. “When is she going to come see us?” he asks. “When do we get to meet her?”

At St. Jude, the family has named a family consult room for Alanna. Doctors, nurses and social workers can gather with families to discuss diagnosis, treatment plans or test results.  There is also a patient room dedicated to Alanna. Their fundraising has made this possible.

When Marcotte was a younger dad, he didn’t know that hereditary retinoblastoma is linked to an increased chance of developing osteosarcoma later in life. Now, he wonders about the potential of genetic research and targeted therapies. Marcotte believes the support his family gives to St. Jude will help find cures. 

It is another way Alanna continues to shape what he does.

She taught him to give.

She taught him to keep going.

And she gave him a reason to believe that even after such a loss, there can still be purpose. There can still be hope.

“Alanna brought such optimism into my life that gave me meaning,” Marcotte said. “Seeing her fight, her spirit and energy, really made me the man I am today.”