Dream Team : Make-A-Wish Group Marks Milestone in Helping Children Who Are Critically Ill

Hers are happy stories that can have unhappy endings.

Judy Lewis has smiled--and cried--through them all during the 11 years she has granted final wishes of Los Angeles children with life-threatening or terminal illnesses.

A dying 4-year-old dreams of meeting the Power Rangers in person. A critically ill 8-year-old wishes she could have cheery new furniture in her bedroom. A 10-year-old chemotherapy patient wants to visit Disney World if she gets stronger.

At the Make-A-Wish Foundation office in West Los Angeles that Lewis helped establish, it is often a race to make a wish come true.

This week, the chapter will grant its 2,000th wish. It’s a professional-style treadmill for a Compton girl whose hobby of running marathons has been halted by lupus, a chronic inflammation of her body’s tissues.

“There’s something so compelling about granting just one wish to a child whose life is being cut so tragically short,” said Lewis, 52, of Westwood.

“It’s a joy to see children light up like candles when their wish is granted. You can see the change in their faces. You can see the reaction in their parents. It brings tears to your eyes.”

There can be tears of frustration too.

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When a 6-year-old boy with a brain tumor wished for a ride in a Lamborghini, he was too sick to leave the hospital when the sports car came to get him. So Lewis hurriedly rounded up Lamborghini posters, key rings and a jacket and took them to his bedside.

Lewis described the items to the boy as he lay dying. “He smiled and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then he said, ‘Please keep talking,’ ” she said.

“It’s excruciating, terribly painful when children are very close to the end of their illness. They are very aware--they know when a playmate at the hospital has passed away between treatments. Sometimes I go home and cry.”

Lewis, a former kindergarten teacher with two grown children, helped organize the local Make-A-Wish chapter in 1983 after a friend read about the Phoenix-based program in a TRW aerospace company employee newsletter. It’s now the largest of 80 national chapters.

The Los Angeles chapter’s first wish was a simple one: a VCR for an 11-year-old boy from Ventura who was missing his favorite TV shows during hospital treatment for cystic fibrosis. After that, a 7-year-old Camarillo boy with leukemia was granted the first of what would become hundreds of trips by various children when he asked to visit Disney World.

Final wishes since then have been limited only by children’s imaginations.

A 14-year-old Inglewood boy with liver cancer whose hobby is raising pigeons dreams of attending an international pigeon breeders’ convention in Germany. A 15-year-old boy with cancer from Westlake Village asks to see the Air Force One presidential jet. A 9-year-old La Crescenta boy with cystic fibrosis wants “to be rich and famous.”

Lewis’ group has granted them all. Often, imagination has been required at its end too.

Make-A-Wish officials ended up chasing Air Force One halfway across the country after President George Bush unexpectedly flew out of Washington the day the Westlake Village boy arrived.

The La Crescenta youngster was made to feel rich and famous when he and his family were treated to a vacation at a posh Hawaiian resort. Hotel workers were given pictures of the boy so they could recognize him and greet him by name when he arrived.

A 6-year-old Alhambra girl with cystic fibrosis who dreamed of the meadow where characters in her favorite film, “Anne of Green Gables,” picnicked went there to visit after the foundation traced the film location to Nova Scotia.

The foundation flew a Granada Hills leukemia patient by private jet to the Miramar Naval Air Station. The 6-year-old boy had confided that his wish was to become a fighter pilot, like characters in his favorite movie, “Top Gun.” Real Navy pilots stood at attention and saluted when he buzzed the base control tower.

When an 8-year-old San Fernando Valley boy with an inoperable brain tumor asked to see his grandmother, it took weeks to find her and get her out of war-torn Beirut. After she arrived at his bedside and spoke to him in Arabic, he pulled out of a coma and rallied enough to go home for a last visit, Lewis said.

The 2,000th wish is being granted to a 15-year-old Compton High School sophomore whose diagnosis of lupus has put an end to her love of running outdoors. The girl--who asked to remain unidentified--will receive a $3,000 treadmill donated by a major fitness company.

Companies are unhesitatingly generous when it comes to granting sick children’s wishes, according to Lewis. So are celebrities.

Actor David Hasselhoff once canceled a weekend trip so he could visit a 10-year-old Van Nuys boy who was critically injured when he was hit by a car. A boy who asked to watch the rock band Metallica play was invited to play guitar during a recording session. A wish to meet the rock group Testament touched musicians so deeply that one of them later attended the youngster’s funeral.

Lewis’ group does not keep statistics on wish-makers who die.

In fact, foundation workers--including 80 volunteers who work in pairs while interviewing young patients--are not encouraged to stay in touch with the children. Seeing youngsters’ health fade could become too emotionally stressful, Lewis said.

Make-A-Wish is one of two organizations in Los Angeles that grant the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. The 12-year-old Starlight Foundation additionally works with children who are either chronically or seriously ill, according to Gail Simons, its director. The Starlight office assists children from throughout the state.

About a dozen Los Angeles-area hospitals nominate young patients for Make-A-Wish’s help.

“It gives children and their families something to really look forward to when they’re going through pretty painful tests,” said Elva Tamashiro, supervisor of a patient-assistance program at Los Angeles Childrens Hospital. “It gives them something to focus on--to know they’re going to make it through these really tough times.”

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That was just what the doctor ordered for 5-year-old Jeffrey Kettle, a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patient from Arcadia. Before undergoing a bone-marrow transplant, Jeffrey wished for a treehouse.

The one that Make-A-Wish volunteers built for him was so elaborate that a city permit was ultimately needed. The boy’s anticipation of playing in the treehouse helped him through something that “they didn’t think he’d live through,” according to his father, Tim Kettle.

Now 7, “Jeffrey’s over the hump--he’s beating the odds,” Kettle said.

“But a lot of these kids don’t make it. Their wish is one of the last pleasant things they have to look forward to.”