John Edwards has mentioned their names often on the campaign trail: James Lowe, Valerie Lakey, the family of Nataline Sarkisyan. Each has a story that illustrates what Edwards has characterized as corporate power's iron-fisted hold on America. They illustrate "what's at stake," Edwards said.

And at campaign events in Manchester, Keene and Derry yesterday, Edwards gave them the spotlight.

Sarkisyan's mother, Hilda, spoke in a hoarse voice about how her daughter, Nataline, was diagnosed with leukemia at age 14. After two years of chemotherapy, she went into remission.

"We had a sweet-16 party," Sarkisyan said before a standing-room-only crowd at Manchester's Franco American Center. "It was the best day. Everything she wanted in life we gave her."

Ten months later, Nataline's cancer was back. Her brother, Bedig, donated his bone marrow, but there were complications, and one day she was jaundiced. The insurance company, Cigna, refused to cover a liver transplant.

At an event in Keene, Sarkisyan told the crowd to "think twice before you renew your policies."

She said it took protests from her church, her work friends, the California Nurses Association and the Armenian Youth Federation, which her daughter was a part of, before Cigna would pay attention to them. And then the company made an "exception" for her daughter, but only hours before Nataline died.

"They knew she was going to die," Sarkisyan said. "Why did they do that? This could happen to all of you guys."

Nataline's father, Grigor, protested outside Cigna headquarters the day his daughter died.

"Cigna, they killed my daughter," he said. "Every day I pass her door. It says, 'Nataline's attic' on her door. I cannot sleep. . . . I have a big hole in my heart right now."

"Work for this man," he said, referring to Edwards. "He's fighting for America."

The Sarkisyans said they promised Nataline that they would tell the world about her fight. They contacted the Edwards campaign recently and volunteered to join him on the trail.

Elizabeth Edwards, the candidate's wife, said the patients' bill of rights that John Edwards helped craft in the U.S. Senate would have prevented Cigna from doing what it did. The bill failed in the House.

John Edwards said the Sarkisyans represent the cause of millions of others in the United States.

"They are the causes of my life," he said in Manchester. "It is not just mine. It is ours. And I am in it with heart, soul, every fiber of my being, every step of the way."

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