Happy Hats Give a Lift to Seriously Ill Children

Choosing among dozens of brightly decorated Easter hats was hard enough for Tammy Khosravy, a 12-year-old found to have bone cancer in January.

But now, as she stood before cameras Friday morning in the playroom of the Miller Children’s Hospital at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, her mother wanted her to don the rabbit-eared hat that had tickled the young girl’s fancy. That, of course, meant taking off her everyday cap and baring for a moment the side effects of chemotherapy.

Soon shyness gave way to a mother’s insistence and the new cap--along with all the volunteers behind its creation--achieved a simple goal: the young ice skater smiled.

“She’s been through so much,” said her mother, Barbara Khosravy. “This is nice.”

The scene is increasingly common since Sheri Schrier founded Happy Hats five years ago. The charity organization accepts donations of hats and decorating materials, then finds volunteers to put them together for children who can appreciate it most.

“Everything is for kids with cancer, leukemia and AIDS,” Schrier said. “Each child comes in and they can pick any hat they like. . . . Their siblings also get a hat.”

Schrier says she and her corps of volunteers have given out 20,000 hats to children across Southern California on various occasions, mostly holidays.

This year, she said, the L.A. Dodgers and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks added to the cap stock, and designers for Mattel’s Barbie doll line volunteered to make hats. But most of her volunteers are senior citizens, she said.

“[The children] feel really pretty in these hats and feel good about themselves,” Schrier said. “We just want them to smile.”