Community Joins Ojai Youth’s Battle Against Deadly Illness : Medicine: Only a liver transplant could save 14-year-old Aaron Clement’s life. Residents have raised $112,000 so far.

Aaron Clement is a 14-year-old Ojai boy who is fighting for his life with a lot of help from a lot of people.

But he doesn’t like to dwell on his fate.

“I don’t think about it,” he says. “I mean, there’s nothing I can do about it and it’s not going to help by crying about it.”

Doctors discovered more than a year ago that Aaron had a malignant tumor on his liver. His only chance of survival, specialists said, was a transplant.

The cost was $100,000 just to get on the waiting list.

But something about the boy’s struggle for survival touched the hearts of residents in the Ojai Valley. Over the past five months, residents held bake sales and barbecues and scattered collection boxes throughout the area. So far, they have collected $112,000 to save Aaron’s life.

“It’s amazing, unbelievable even,” said Annie Luftenburg, Aaron’s mother, who wears a pager waiting for the life-saving call. “All those little donations added up . . . but that’s the Ojai Valley. There are some pretty great people here.”

The fund-raising campaign was launched in August by Charlene Fitzgerald, a home-school teacher who has been giving Aaron lessons since he became too ill to attend Matilija Junior High School 13 months ago. Initially, she was overwhelmed by the goal of meeting the cost of earning Aaron a spot on transplant list.

“When they told me we needed $100,000, I thought, ‘No way,’ ” Fitzgerald said. “But people could relate to what was happening and everybody got in there.”

The bulk of the money has come from the Ojai Valley, where Aaron lives with his mom, brother, sister and stepfather. Aaron’s natural father lives in Seattle.

For a time, it seemed as if everyone got involved. Children from Oak Grove Elementary School, for instance, collected $400 by selling cookies and lemonade for a few hours one Saturday.

Local businesses played a key role. The Ojai Valley Surplus store chipped in 75 “Aaron Clement” T-shirts, which raised $7,500. Seafresh Seafood raffled an eight-pound lobster for $325 and a local artist donated a handmade quilt that brought in $300.

The local Domino’s Pizza franchise and Ruben’s Burritos kicked-in 10% of their receipts on selected days to bring in about $2,500.

And thousands of people dropped dollar bills, dimes, nickels and pennies into the 50 collection boxes placed in local businesses. Others attended plays and concerts, went bowling and held barbecues to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars more.

With the exception of a $10,000 donation from Kagehisa Toyama of the Farmont Corp. and a $5,000 contribution from Ted Mann of Mann Theatres, no personal donation was more than $1,000, Fitzgerald said.

“We’re real protective of one another here,” said Ruben Duarte, 30, owner of Ruben’s Burritos and a lifelong Ojai Valley resident. “Everybody basically just pulls together.”

And Aaron is popular here, with both those who know him, and those who think they do.

“He’s a great kid, very polite,” said Barbara Lisman, a cashier at the Double J Market, a convenience store three blocks away from Aaron’s home. “Not everybody knows him, but because of the fund raising and his picture being all over town, everyone felt connected to him and wanted to do something for him.”

Although thankful for the outpouring of support, Aaron is uncomfortable with the attention that he has received. He shies from questions about his celebrity status in the community.

He is grateful that his illness has not changed his relationship with his friends, most of whom are freshmen at Nordhoff High School. “They treat me the same, except they don’t beat up on me anymore . . . not as hard anyway.”

Aaron first became sick a little more than a year ago when he could not shake flu-like symptoms, his mother said. About a week before Christmas in 1991, she woke up at 3 a.m. to find Aaron lying on the floor next to her bed.

“He told me he had thrown up, but was too weak to clean it up,” Luftenburg said, the pain of the memory evident in her cracking voice.

After a series of tests, the cancerous tumor was discovered. It had also taken over parts of his small intestine, gall bladder and pancreas and entered his stomach, said his physician, Ronald W. Busuttil, chief surgeon and director of the Liver Transplant Center at UCLA Medical Center.

Months of chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed.

Since November, Aaron has not been undergoing chemotherapy because his physicians worried that it would weaken him too much to survive not only a transplant, but the removal of the affected parts of the other organs as well.

Meanwhile, the family waits. No one knows how long it will take until a liver becomes available. Aaron passes the time experimenting in his garage, doing school lessons and listening to Metallica.

“I think since he’s gotten on the list, he is starting to realize the seriousness of it,” said Fitzgerald. “Recently, he told me, ‘I wish it could stay like this.’ He’s handled everything miraculously. If anyone has a chance of surviving, it’s him.”