Santas Kick Into Gear : Fueled by a Mother’s Love, Bikers’ Group Makes Toy Run to Hospital

For more than 15 years, Joyce Chance had been looking for a way to say thanks to UCLA Medical Center for prolonging the life of her 6-year-old son, who died in 1972 of liver cancer. She found the answer while riding on the back of her husband’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

For the past five years, Chance has been the force behind the annual UCLA Memorial Toy Run, sponsored by the Fullerton chapter of the Harley Owners Group (HOG), of which Chance is a member.

“UCLA gave Johnnie two years I wouldn’t have had with him,” Chance said. “I saw the HOG doing toy runs for other groups, and I said to myself, ‘That’s what I can do for UCLA.’ ”

On Sunday morning, about 90 bikers, many with toys strapped to their Harley-Davidsons, journeyed in a convoy on the Artesia (91) and San Diego (405) freeways from Fullerton and converged on UCLA Medical Center. With more than 60 motorcycles parked in the hospital’s outpatient drop-off area and bikers milling about eating doughnuts, the scene could have been a Harley-Davidson rally instead of a toy drive.

But there they were, more than 100 toys piled high on a long table and on the floor underneath. Gifts ranging from teddy bears to Tonka trucks, hand-held electronic games and strollers will be distributed primarily as Christmas and birthday presents to children who are patients at UCLA.

Because most of the children were too sick to leave their beds and see the gifts, a swarm of leather-clad bikers went up to the ward to visit them. As if walking in a parade, the HOG members moved down the corridor, waving and calling out greetings to the children.

The smiles came slowly, although 3-year-old Sierra Penn, who sat in a stroller in the doorway of her room, had no such inhibitions. She blew kisses to the bikers, and even the burliest of the group blew kisses back. “Most of us have kids, so the fatherly and motherly thing comes out,” said Jim (Wolfman) Fortier, director of the Fullerton HOG and a Long Beach police sergeant.

One HOG member, with the permission of the nursing staff, brought his Harley-Davidson up to the third floor for show-and-tell. Dwayne Freeman, an 11-year-old patient with his arm linked to a mobile intravenous unit, sat wide-eyed and speechless on the back of the motorcycle as he was rolled down the hall to his hospital room.

The scene left one biker teary-eyed.

“I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” said Joe (Tennessee) Herron, 35, who was sporting a long, bushy beard, leather vest and a handkerchief tied around his head. “Rain or shine, I’d be here.”

The Fullerton HOG also donated $450 to UCLA’s Child Life Program, which helps young patients accept their illnesses and adjust to being hospitalized. Much of the program, directed by Dr. Judith Golub, is focused on 40% of the children in the hospital--those who must undergo painful and traumatic procedures such as bone marrow aspirations, transplants and chemotherapy.

Golub praised Chance’s initiative in helping to make the young patients more comfortable.

“Although many of our families do want to give something back to the hospital, not many of them have the determination that Joyce has shown in getting this together,” said Golub, who also directs a special program for the 45 families whose children are patients with AIDS.

Chance, a soft-spoken housewife, said the toy run is something that her son, like most children, would have enjoyed. Johnnie was found to have Wilms’ tumors when he was 4, and was operated on several times at UCLA between 1971 and 1972. He spent up to five consecutive days hospitalized during his chemotherapy treatments.

The hospital did what it could to make the situation pleasant, Chance said.

“They used to have something like a picnic every Wednesday for the children, with clowns and games,” she said. “For the kids who were bedridden, they would even wheel down the beds.”

But the sadness she felt in those days about her son’s illness is still vivid and painful, Chance said.

“I can’t go inside,” she said, standing on the sidewalk outside the hospital. “I tried it last year, thinking I would be OK, then all of the memories come rushing back. But I don’t need to do that. What I’m doing outside here--it’s enough.”