Everywhere you turn Jacob’s heartyou will find love, compassion, joy and hope that rise above the sickness, strife and sorrow that are the reasons it exists.
Walk down a 30-foot hallway through a mosaic of photos that show hundreds upon hundreds of children with parents, siblings, and Jacob’s Heart staff, each image with a story that begins with cancer and ends in triumph or grief.
Take a curve past Maddy’s Jungle, where toddlers frolic on the tiger-print rug, ride stuffed animals and play with toys in front of a wall covered in a forest full of animals. The room is named after the little girl who died as one of the first children served by Jacob’s Heart. Maddy loved jungle creatures.
A hallway at Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services is filled with snaps of hundreds of families helped by the nonprofit. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Pause for Art from the Heart, a section of the wall featuring the work of relatives. There’s a happy goldfish, alongside handprints of a sister and brother named Angela and Alex, and a green flower against a pastel background painted for Janet by Noemi, who drew a heart by her sister’s name.
Head to the volunteer room and check out the decorations added to brown shopping bags to brighten the days of the children and families who receive weekly groceries to help them through unimaginably difficult times. You’ll see bunnies and rainbows, and nearby you’ll find the cards healthy kids make to send to sick kids: one has two penguins with a heart between them and a message that says, “Let’s stick together.” Another has a sheep with googly eyes and a message in Spanish that says, “There’s no one like you.”
Daniela Ramirez, a family support specialist at Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services in Watsonville, California, runs errands. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Check out the mural in the Full Hearts room where volunteers run errands. The artwork depicts a majestic lion, his mane surrounded by a heart. After Johnny Robledo died at age 16, his cousin painted the mural and added some words next to the lion that Johnny left so people would know he left this world undefeated: “I want people to know that I was here and that I fought.”
Browse Caroline’s Closet, a room full of clothes from a partner thrift store. You’ll see clothes for all ages, plus essentials like soap, cleaning supplies, and toothpaste. In a pile are about a dozen volunteer-knitted hats for babies suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. “Beanies are a big request when the kids start losing their hair,” says family support worker Daniela Ramirez.
Stop in front of the large bulletin board map showing the region from San Francisco south to King City. Each of the many pins represents a child with cancer that Jacob’s Heart has helped, colored according to the type of cancer. Most pins are clustered in Watsonville, Santa Cruz, and Salinas, within the Watsonville-based nonprofit’s primary coverage area. Jacob’s Heart is seeking $40,000 to strengthen its services – and to extend its assistance throughout Santa Clara County.
For parents whose child is diagnosed with cancer, the problems pile on fears and worries: Caring for the young girl or boy whose life has been catastrophically altered by a life-threatening or terminal illness, sometimes hospitalized for months and needing treatments far from home – becomes all-consuming. A parent, sometimes a single parent, often has to quit their job. For the families Jacob’s Heart serves, many of them on low incomes, there is not enough money, not enough time. Siblings, already traumatized by the knowledge that their beloved relative may pass away, may feel neglected, adding more pressure to distressed mothers and fathers who are already struggling to provide for one child’s enormous needs.
Gilroy’s Sebastian Van Deren was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer in August 2020, a week before his sophomore year of high school was due to begin. The diagnosis sent the Van Deren family to “hell on earth,” says Sebastian’s mother Andrea, 43, a yoga teacher and photographer. “Your whole world just falls out from under you,” she says. Sebastian’s father James recalls watching his healthy and active son become sick and weak from cancer and the side effects of radiation and chemotherapy. “We were happy when he would eat two grapes,” says James, 52, an electrician.
Cancer patient Sebastian Van Deren walks with his parents Andrea and James and their family dogs Lincoln and Dexter on a camping trip at Mount Madonna County Park near Watsonville, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
A school nurse put the family in touch with Jacob’s Heart, and the organization’s financial support, guidance and compassion helped the Van Derens through their two-year nightmare. Today, after two surgeries, traveling to Ohio for precision radiation and six rounds of chemotherapy, Sebastian, 17, is cancer-free, is on the high school roll of honor, enjoys studying physics, biking miles around his Gilroy neighborhood, and continuing to attending teen events at Jacob’s Heart. “I’m just really happy to have who I have with me, especially my family and Jacob’s Heart,” says Sebastian. “Everyone is so nice there.”
Jacob’s Heart has been in operation for 25 years and is named after another boy who survived cancer against all odds, whose mother had to give up her job to care for him. The organization serves more than 350 families at any given time and works closely with the Bay Area health centers where young patients receive much of their treatment, including Stanford Medical Center, UC San Francisco, and Kaiser Permanente. Jacob’s Heart relies on 14 full-time employees, a large number of contractors and hundreds of volunteers, such as Tanner Tedsen, a local insurance agent who delivers groceries to families’ homes on a weekly basis. “They’re the cutest little kids imaginable, running up to say thank you,” says Tedsen.
Jacob’s Heart’s goals are quite simple: to ease the burden on children and families of a life-changing diagnosis, and to bring light to lives suddenly overshadowed. The nonprofit takes a comprehensive approach, embracing young patients and their families, from infants to grandparents, and helping them through every stage of illness, treatment and beyond.
“We have a saying: Once a Jacob’s Heart family, always a Jacob’s Heart family,” says Allyssa Gil-Ojeda, a coordinator at the nonprofit.
Cancer survivor Sebastian Van Deren, 17, holds a painted rock he keeps near his favorite redwood tree in Mount Madonna County Park near Watsonville, California, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. Sebastian and his family received hope and help from the non-profit Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer support services. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Jacob’s Heart offerings include family support in English and Spanish, professional counseling, peer mentorship, transportation to medical appointments, gas cards, bill and funeral grants, teen social gatherings, trips to the beach, zoo and theme parks, and Holiday Hearts seasonal gifts . It also offers an annual Forever Loved camp for parents and siblings who have lost a child to cancer, and an annual Camp Heart & Hands, staffed by Stanford pediatric nurses, for families and their children in treatment or remission.
The nonprofit also forges bonds — between families and other service providers, between children and other children who share a diagnosis that no other child can truly understand, and between families who share similar trials, including siblings who experience traumatic events that peers have not touched.
“What we really bring into a community is the social and emotional connection,” says Heidi Boynton, executive director of Jacob’s Heart and a cancer survivor. “Knowing you’re not alone certainly changes things.”
Outside of Jacob’s Heart on this particular day, high in the mountains between Watsonville and Gilroy, the Van Derens camp in a county park between redwoods and oaks, with their two small dogs Dexter and Lincoln. They often camp there.
The family walks down the trail to the redwood they call Big Tree. At its base, it’s about thirty feet across—blackened by fire and bearing the scars of someone trying to chop it down. For the Van Derens, Big Tree has become part of the story of their trials. “I don’t know how he survived, but he did,” says James. Sebastian tilts his head back and stares up. “Through it all, it just kept going,” he says. “Look at it. You can’t even see the top. This tree is just so tall.”
Cancer survivor Sebastian Van Deren, 17, visits his favorite redwood tree with his parents Andrea and James at Mount Madonna County Park near Watsonville, California, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization administered by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has produced a series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.
WISH
Donations will help Jacob’s Heart expand support services and provide care to at least 50 families caring for children with cancer in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. Funds will pay for weekly deliveries of food, basic groceries, crisis counseling, transportation to medical appointments, rent assistance and much more. Goal: $40,000.
HOW TO GIVE
Donate wishbook.mercurynews.com or email in the coupon.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video on wishbook.mercurynews.com.
The post Wish Book: Jacob’s Heart, which offers help and compassion to children with cancer and their families, strives to expand Santa Clara County appeared first on WhatsNew2Day.