Kelli Pedroia warns of tanning dangers

Want to be tan? Be careful.

Winters are long in the Chicago area, where Kelli Hatley Pedroia grew up, so she'd frequent the local tanning parlor. She was 14 when she started, not legally old enough, so her older sister signed for her.

"We just felt pasty and gross from the winters," she says.

Summers were spent at the backyard pool. On spring break, the family always went somewhere hot. "My mother and I would just fry ourselves with tanning oil and no sunscreen," says Pedroia, who's married to Dustin, the Red Sox second baseman and last season's American League Rookie of the Year.

A photo of her on the night of her senior prom shows her tanned in a strapless white dress, flanked by her equally tanned parents. A year later, at age 18, she was diagnosed with stage two melanoma, which is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women ages 25 to 30.