BOSTON -- Kelli Pedroia bears the scars of a cancer survivor. The first time doctors diagnosed her with melanoma, she was just 18 years old.

“The one’s the big guy,” she told NewsCenter 5’s Liz Brunner, pointing out a scar several inches long that crosses her thigh. “The mole was so small I can’t even begin to tell you.”

Melanoma Resources | Life As A Red Sox Wife | Pedroia's Wife On Marriage | Your Skin Is In | Talking To Teens About Tanning

“I was always outside and always at the pool,” she said of her childhood summers in Illinois. “I first went to a tanning bed when I was 14 or 15.”

Pedroia, wife of the Red Sox second baseman, said, “When I was diagnosed with melanoma I had no idea what it was.”

Days after doctors cut an egg-size tumor out of her thigh, Pedroia was back out tanning.

“It definitely didn’t sink in,” she said. “Two years later it came back, skin cancer.”

A third occurrence, on her neck, was also skin cancer.

“I think how could this be true? How could you be diagnosed and still continue to tan? It happens and it happens a lot,” said Deb Girard, executive director of the Melanoma Foundation of New England, the group with which Pedroia recently signed on as a spokesperson.

Pedroia’s goal now, she said, is to help teenagers avoid her fate. Statistics show her high-profile case couldn’t come as a better time. Since 1980, the number of melanoma cases among women in their teens, 20s and 30s has spiked 50 percent.

“In the last year the number of calls that we get from young women who are very ill has really increased,” said Girard.

However the number of men getting melanoma has stayed flat since 1980, leading many to blame the use of tanning beds, as well as the way young women think about being tan.

“Tanning beds produce three to six times the amount of UV radiation that you would get out in the sun for 30 minutes,” said Girard.

Brunner talked with many young women out in the sun on Revere Beach on a recent summer day, and very few said they used sunscreen on a regular basis.

“I probably will get skin cancer too ‘cause I'm not wearing it,” said one woman.

Another said she was aware of how spending time in the sun without protection would increase her risk of getting melanoma, but said she still did it because “tanner people look better, I guess.”

Using tanning beds even once a month makes you 75 percent more likely to develop a potentially deadly skin cancer, according to the Melanoma Foundation of New England. The group backs a bill that would not allow anyone under age 16 to use tanning beds. The Massachusetts Legislature has yet to pass it.

Six years after her first diagnosis, Pedroia said she doesn’t bake in the sun-filled stands at Fenway Park.

“It finally hit me that, you know what? My body can't handle the sun, its very susceptible to cancer so its time to get smart.” She said she wears SPF 45 sunscreen all the time, and thanks her husband for the role he played in her new outlook.

“He’s always got sunscreen on,” said Pedroia. “He’s been great about it. He's been very supportive and he's been a big part behind me being able to be strong and sticking to it.”

Some people believe we need to spend unprotected time in the sun to help our bodies produce vitamin D. While the benefits of vitamin D toward overall health are becoming increasingly important, doctors and melanoma prevention advocates alike agree that taking a daily supplement may be the safest way to get it.