EAST CONTRA COSTA — Nearly three years after California lawmakers began discussing a bill authorizing pink ribbon license plates, drivers now can order their own to support the fight against breast cancer.

About 700 people have requested the specialty plates since the state began taking orders Sept. 4; if it receives at least 7,500 by July 20, the image of the iconic pink ribbon symbolizing moral support for those with the disease will start showing up on highways and byways around California.

“What an impact that would be!” said Brentwood resident Cheré Rush, one of four East Contra Costa County women who have battled breast cancer and initiated the campaign for the pink plates that she likens to ubiquitous billboards.

“We’re hoping that it will remind people to be aware of their bodies, remind their family members to be proactive,” she said.

The plates — they’ll be the 14th design the state has approved advocating special interests — cost $50 the first year in addition to the usual registration fee unless they’re personalized, in which case they’re $98. Annual renewals run $40.

The state Department of Health Care Services will use the revenue to provide free mammograms to low-income and uninsured women.

Rush knows the importance of an early diagnosis all too well.

She didn’t immediately see a doctor when she first discovered a painful lump in her breast eight years ago: Rush assumed it was a benign change to the tissue that’s common to many women because she had no family history of breast cancer, and at 39, hadn’t reached the age at which doctors start recommending mammograms.

But the persistent ache and sensitivity to touch worsened until Rush finally made an appointment four months later. A lumpectomy and imaging test revealed that she not only had stage 4 cancer but that it had invaded her liver, spleen, spine and both lungs.

Doctors initially gave the mother of three young boys no more than a couple of years to live, but eight months of chemotherapy arrested the spread of the disease.

Now 47, Rush still routinely receives shots and pills; the treatments will continue the rest of her life because the cancer was so advanced by the time it was discovered that she’ll never be considered cured.

Moreover, the drugs are damaging her heart, so it’s only a matter of time before Rush will have to discontinue the chemotherapy temporarily in hopes that it will heal. And during that time the cancer could resume its attack, she says.

“We don’t want people to end up in the place that I am. I don’t want women to have to go through the same struggles,” said Rush, recalling having to tell her sons she was going to die. “You need to go in and get checked.”

Reach Rowena Coetsee at 925-779-7141. Follow her at Twitter.com/RowenaCoetsee