NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Rotary Helps Boy Get Heart Surgery

Tiny Raulito Figueroa of Guatemala City can “smile like gangbusters” now, say his American hosts, thanks to open heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center arranged by a Valencia-based group with financial backing from several San Fernando Valley Rotary clubs.

“The thing that’s special about the Rotary is they have the vision to help people,” said Cris Embleton of Valencia, executive director of Healing the Children, a volunteer group that helps critically ill children from around the world get medical help in the United States.

Qualifying for the help is difficult. The children come from a long waiting list of cases drawn up from the recommendations of medical professionals. Raulito, who is 3 1/2 months old, was able to get the assistance after another child with a similar heart defect died while waiting for help.

The effort to bring the boy to Los Angeles for surgery began about six weeks ago. Rotary clubs from Burbank, Glendale, La Canada-Flintridge, North Hollywood, Studio City and Sherman Oaks, the district Rotary organization covering the San Fernando Valley, and a Rotary club in Guatemala raised $8,000 toward the effort. “We got the funding together in a week’s time,” said Charles Reinhart Jr., governor of District 5260 of Rotary International.

The boy’s surgery on Dec. 8 repaired a hole between two chambers in his heart and replaced a heart valve, said Carl Boyer, who has been hosting the boy during his visit to the United States. Raulito is expected to return to Guatemala around the first of the year.

Embleton, who began Healing the Children in 1979 in Spokane, Wash., attended a Rotary meeting in North Hollywood last week to thank Rotarians and update them on the recovery. It is children like Raulito--and the 4,000 other children brought to the United States since Healing the Children began--that become goodwill ambassadors throughout the United States, Embleton said.

“That’s what the kids pick up when they come to the United States and feel the love here,” Embleton said.

Raulito’s story makes a good Christmas story, she said. His mother had four children stillborn before he was born, and when his parents learned of his critical heart condition, they were desperate to find a way to save him, Embleton said. Thirty of Raulito’s family members and friends were on hand at the airport when Amber Dikel--a board member for Healing the Children--went to Guatemala to pick up the child.

Healing the Children has limited funding, but finds hospitals willing to perform the surgery and groups willing to help pay the cost. The $8,000 raised by the Rotary paid only a nominal cost for a surgery that would cost tens of thousands of dollars, said Peggy Frank Shaff, a spokeswoman for Cedars-Sinai.