Moved by Michelle Carew’s Death, Many Seek to Help

The extended family of Michelle Carew expanded Thursday, as her death moved tens of thousands of people throughout the nation, including Vice President Al Gore, to reach for their telephones and checkbooks.

From those who knew and loved her to those who admired her from afar, the people who mourned the 18-year-old’s passing tried their best to concentrate on the legacy rather than the loss.

“Because of what happened to Michelle, other kids won’t have to go through this,” said an emotional Susan Reid, executive director of the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation in Orange. “There will be more money for research, and hopefully we’ll find a cure.”

Michelle, the daughter of Hall of Fame baseball player Rod Carew, died Wednesday after a seven-month battle with acute nonlymphocytic leukemia.

At the foundation Reid heads, which funds all cancer research done by Children’s Hospital of Orange County, operators were deluged with phone calls from people wanting somehow to help.

At the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis, which received more than 70,000 calls after Michelle’s condition was diagnosed last fall, the already frantic rate of calls increased.

In just 12 hours following Michelle’s death, nearly 3,000 people inquired about joining the bone marrow registry.

Michelle’s genetic makeup had greatly complicated the search for a marrow donor. She was the daughter of a black man with West Indian-Panamanian lineage and a white mother of Russian-Jewish descent.

“As much as this has been covered, there are still people tuning in who are just finding out what happened, and they want to help,” said Luis Silva, donor service coordinator for the program’s Western Regional office in Covina. “They want to join and to find out what it entails, so that no other family will have to go through what the Carews went through.”

At the offices of the California Angels, the team for which Michelle’s father is a revered batting instructor, the phone was ringing off the hook, with one of the calls from the vice president.

At Children’s Hospital, the 40 nurses in the Oncology Intensive Care Unit were too devastated to talk, a spokesman said.

“I have wept because of two patients,” said hospital spokesman Orman Day. “One was Michelle.”

People around the world had responded to Michelle’s determination, and to her father’s visible heartbreak. Cards and letters arrived at Children’s Hospital from every corner.

“People were leaving messages [in Michelle’s honor] at the Wailing Wall,” Day said.

A man on the East Coast heard that Michelle had never seen snow falling. So he filmed the snow falling outside his window and sent her the tape.

When a woman heard about the man’s gesture, she crocheted snowflakes and sent them to the Carews.

“This touched a chord,” Day said.

When the 15-member varsity softball team took the field Thursday at Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills, they did so in somber memory of their former teammate, Michelle Carew, who was designated hitter for the team last season, her senior year.

In a pregame ceremony, the girls placed 15 carnations on the fence. Several team members will take the flowers to Minneapolis for Michelle’s funeral.

“We’ve dedicated this game to her,” said the coach, Lance Eddy. “We always thought she was going to make it.”