Hill­man, James Ros­setti, for ex­am­ple, trained at AHN, Dr. Parda added.

Mean­while, UPMC has more than 200 med­i­cal, ra­di­a­tion and sur­gi­cal can­cer doc­tors at more than 60 lo­ca­tions in Western Penn­syl­va­nia and Ohio. Each cen­ter is closely tied to UPMC Hill­man in Shadyside, so the care is con­sis­tent, re­gard­less of where it’s pro­vided, a spokes­woman said.

Most re­cently, UPMC Hill­man doc­tors pre­scribed main­te­nance in­fu­sions of Rituxan for Ms. Hays, an im­mu­no­ther­apy drug ap­proved by the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion in 1997 for non-Hodg­kin’s lym­phoma. Since then, it has been pre­scribed for an ex­pand­ing num­ber of other dis­eases, in­clud­ing chronic lym­pho­cytic leu­ke­mia.

“It’s work­ing,” Ms. Hays said. “You take it un­til the dis­ease starts to prog­ress, then hope­fully there’s some­thing else out there. So, we’ll see how long it keeps the dis­ease from pro­gress­ing.”

She keeps her mind off can­cer by stay­ing in­volved in a va­ri­ety of ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing sing­ing in her church choir, gar­den­ing and car­ing for her 76-year-old hus­band, David, a re­tired school prin­ci­pal who has had mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis for 25 years.

If her dis­ease stops re­spond­ing to the cur­rent treat­ment, she has a plan for the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture.

She said she will switch health in­sur­ance cov­er­age in Jan­u­ary 2020 to a car­rier that of­fers ac­cess to both AHN and UPMC doc­tors. That will al­low her to re­turn to UPMC Hill­man, if needed, while her hus­band can con­tinue see­ing his Al­le­gheny Health Net­work doc­tors.

“My num­bers are al­most nor­mal,” the 75-year-old Ms. Hays said about her lat­est blood-cell count, add­ing that she was op­ti­mis­tic about the new med­i­cine she’s tak­ing.

“And hope­fully, it’ll give me a cou­ple more years. That’s how we do it.”

Kris B. Mam­ula: kmam­ula@post-ga­zette.com or 412-263-1699.

They al­most picked Detroit.

About a year ago, they went there to check out houses that looked prom­is­ing on real es­tate web­sites.

But the prop­er­ties they could af­ford were in bad shape, the tran­sit sys­tem was far be­low their ex­pec­ta­tions — they don’t own a car and don’t plan to — and they didn’t sense enough pos­i­tive ef­fort be­ing in­vested in re­mak­ing a city hit hard by the de­cline of heavy man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The night be­fore they re­turned to Cal­i­for­nia, Ms. Collins no­ticed Pitts­burgh on a map and re­called the short time she lived here as a young adult.

She booked a ticket for her hus­band to travel here a cou­ple of days later.

Mr. Collins looked at Home­wood, Swiss­vale and a cou­ple of city neigh­bor­hoods. Then Kim Phares, an agent with Howard Hanna Real Estate, sug­gested he check out the Sto-Rox area.

“Com­ing from San Fran­cisco and com­ing in to­tally cold, he was open,” Ms. Phares said. “He wanted to con­nect with Pitts­burgh and its cul­ture, and I told him and Julie — he was talk­ing to her on FaceTime — there would be a lot here for them.”

Driv­ing through McKees Rocks and Stowe, Mr.

Collins was im­pressed with ren­o­va­tion work then in prog­ress at the Rox­ian The­atre, a 1929 vaude­ville house on Chart­iers Avenue set to re­open in May; cul­tural hap­pen­ings across the street at the Father Ryan Arts Center; and the ren­o­vated Park­way Theater movie house on Broad­way Avenue.

“The area is com­ing up, and we wanted to be a part of that re­vi­tal­iza­tion,” he re­called.

He checked a phone app to mea­sure walk­abil­ity to stores, ser­vices and pub­lic trans­por­ta­tion, got a high score and con­cluded, “We can do this.”

They’ve seen crime be­fore

Ms. Phares has sold homes in the Pitts­burgh area to San Fran­cis­cans be­fore — but they typ­i­cally in­vest and then rent the houses to ten­ants.

The Collinses in­tend to stay.

They have al­ready spent be­tween $10,000 and $15,000 to up­grade their home with a new wa­ter heater and fur­nace and blond-wood floors that are part of their open-space, Scan­di­na­vian de­sign theme.

The din­ing room serves as a stu­dio, and they planted flower bulbs brought from San Fran­cisco in the front yard. Avid gar­den­ers, they

are work­ing on raised beds in the back­yard for plants and veg­e­ta­bles.

Hav­ing crammed on re­search be­fore Mr. Collins’ scout­ing trip, the cou­ple were aware of high crime rates and drug is­sues in Sto-Rox.

They weren’t de­terred.

Although their San Fran­cisco neigh­bor­hood, Alamo Square, was a pop­u­lar tour­ist des­ti­na­tion, crime was ram­pant, Mr. Collins said.

Ac­cord­ing to FBI data, San Fran­cisco had the high­est per-ca­pita rate of prop­erty crimes among the 20 most pop­u­lated U.S. cit­ies in 2017. It was 75th among 298 U.S. cit­ies ranked ac­cord­ing to vi­o­lent crimes.

A de­cade ago Ms. Collins lived in an apart­ment in a San Fran­cisco neigh­bor­hood where “gun­shots used to bounce off the side of her build­ing,” said her hus­band.

“We both feel per­fectly safe here,” he said. “There is a real sense that ev­ery­one looks out for one an­other.”

What they miss

They do miss some life­style ame­ni­ties they took for granted in San Fran­cisco.

For Ms. Collins, it’s the pleth­ora of farm­ers mar­kets; for Mr. Collins, it’s the nu­mer­ous Zip­car pods where he could quickly rent trans­por­ta­tion for er­rands.

Here, they use lo­cal

Judy Hays has been the pub­lic face of At­tor­ney Gen­eral Josh Sha­piro’s chal­lenge to UPMC’s re­fusal to sign a con­tract with ri­val High­mark. Mr. Sha­piro wants pa­tients to have the choice of see­ing UPMC doc­tors in­def­i­nitely, re­gard­less of their health in­sur­ance cov­er­age.

Judy Hays, 75, with hus­band Dave, 76, and their dog Reme.

Lake Fong/​Post-Ga­zette