OJAI : Sale Will Help Fund Girl’s Cancer Costs

Ojai residents are pooling their resources and household items to hold a fund-raising community sale to help pay expenses for a 12-year-old Ojai girl stricken with bone cancer.

Lacey Ipach, who learned just after Labor Day that she has cancer in her right arm, receives chemotherapy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Chris Ipach, Lacey’s mother.

“Right now she goes for treatment Tuesday through Friday, and on some weekends,” she said. “She only goes to school on Mondays and from 9 a.m. to noon, and mostly for social reasons,” Ipach said.

Ipach has taken a leave of absence from her job as a food service worker at Nordhoff High School in Ojai, leaving her husband, Eddie, a meter reader with the Southern California Gas Co., as the sole income earner. The loss of the second income has created financial hardship for the family.

“I never thought we’d have a problem where we’d need help,” said Ipach. “There are so many nice people, so many well-wishers.”

The fund-raiser was organized by Lacey’s sixth-grade teacher, Linda Coultas, to help the family with travel and other expenses.

Volunteers will set up a portable building at Chaparral High School in Ojai where people can drop off goods to be sold at the community garage sale, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 14 at the school auditorium.

The public is asked to donate furniture, clothes, jewelry or anything salable from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for one week beginning Friday at Chaparral High School, 114 N. Montgomery Ave., Ojai.