Care Package

Happy holidays from Andrea’s kids, who have moved inside on this bone-chilling December evening and taken over the most exclusive club in town.

They crowd a small hardwood floor and dance--the teenager with Hodgkin’s disease, the little boy with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the little girl with one leg.

The strobe lights bounce off a bald head, bruised arms, metal crutches, and 20 smiles as wide as the Rocky Mountains.

Some of these gravely ill kids are recovering, some are not. But on this night, everyone shines, bouncing and screeching and waving their hands around a howling former tennis star named Andrea Jaeger.

The song is “Staying Alive.”

Thanks in part to generous Southern Californians, so is the mandate.

Many of you have been here before, reading on three other occasions in this space of the wonderfully intimate retreat for children with life-threatening illnesses.

But this is different.

You’re part of it now.

Many of you have read how Andrea Jaeger, a former teen tennis brat who lost her childhood somewhere on the way to Wimbledon, has regained it through something called the Silver Lining Ranch.

You may remember how, nearly seven years ago, she sold most of her possessions, cashed in her tennis earnings and started this camp with four buddies.

They take only 20 kids at a time, only five or six times a year.

And perhaps the most important part of camp happens after it’s over, when the kids leave and are given a toll-free number and newsletters and other ways to keep in touch with a support group that will always return their calls.

Jaeger knows you have read because, with no prompting, you have helped.

Thousands of you. Letters from everywhere.

Jaeger has received quarters from senior citizens in Costa Mesa, weekly allowances from students in Pasadena, hundreds from corporations in Torrance.

In the 2 1/2 years since the first Jaeger story appeared here, she has received nearly $200,000 in mostly small donations from Southern California.

Outside of Aspen, our town was the first place to believe in her mission. Our town was the first place to want to become part of it.

“The people of Los Angeles were the first to really embrace us, to really understand us,” Jaeger said.

And for this, Los Angeles, she has saved you a room.

In her new, $6-million, 18,000-square-foot ranch house.

The biggest, best room in the house.

Thanks to the momentum started in Southern California, Jaeger has nearly enough money to build a permanent facility for her children here, on the banks of the Roaring Fork River, with a mountain view that can never be blocked.

The ranch house, tentatively scheduled to open this summer as long as they can keep paying the hard hats, features a sprawling, fireplace-adorned room just inside the front door.

It is the room where the children will gather between skiing or rafting or shopping trips. It is the room where they can hang out just to talk, to start feeling part of the world again after amputation or chemotherapy or just a bad day.

It is such an important room, major contributors have continually tried to have it named after them or their companies, but Jaeger has steadfastly refused to do that.

“I wanted to name it after the people who were with us when this was only a dream,” Jaeger said. “I want to honor the wonderful people with those nickels and quarters.”

Provided construction continues, by next June a plaque will go up in the room.

“The City of Angels,” it will read.

Your room.

Happy holidays from Andrea’s kids, who are skyward during a quick donated ride on a Gulfstream jet, as excited by the padded toilet as the expansive view.

“This is crazy,” chuckles Rachel Clayton, 10, of Burbank, one of two local children attending this winter session.

“This is not crazy,” quietly replies Katie Roberds, 11, of Las Vegas. “This is . . . “

Failing to find the proper word, she points at snow-capped mountains that look close enough to touch.

As if forgetting she can’t actually touch them, she points so hard she jams her fingers hard into the plane’s oval window.

“Ouch!” Katie shouts, then shrugs, accustomed to bumping against the impossible.

She is attending this session only because doctors agreed to delay regular chemotherapy sessions by a week, even though it meant she would be in the hospital for Christmas.

And she is attending this session with one leg. Bone cancer took her other one.

“It was either miss Aspen with Andrea, or miss Christmas at home,” said Katie, also temporarily bald. “I wanted to be with Andrea. They are like another family.”

Roberds came to believe that shortly after attending a summer session here, when she phoned the counselors with the toll-free number. She just wanted to say “Hi,” but figured nobody would answer.

Somebody did. Either somebody always answers, or always phones back.

“It’s neat,” Katie said. “They always call back, even if you just want to talk about nothing. They are always there.”

When she called Jaeger before this winter session, though, it was serious.

“I had outgrown my prosthesis, and didn’t have a new one, and was worried that Andrea wouldn’t take me,” Katie said. “But when I told her on the phone, she said, ‘So what?’ ”

So she skied--sitting down.

And she mushed a dog sled.

And yes, in Jaeger’s arms, on that final night in that fancy club, she danced.

And when Katie’s roommate in the local hotel cried the first night because she didn’t want to sleep next to somebody with one leg?

Two of Jaeger’s counselors--a group of about eight friends, one a registered nurse--simply asked Katie to show and explain the site of her amputation. Soon, another one-legged camper joined the midnight discussion.

After her fears were explained and quieted, the roommate slept soundly for the rest of the session.

“When you’re a kid with cancer, you feel like an outcast,” said Colleen Carrigan, 14, from the Boston area. “Andrea and everybody here reminds you, you’re not.”

When the first Jaeger story appeared in this space in the summer of 1996, her camp was called, “the mythical Silver Lining Ranch.”

At the time, a permanent home could be found only on the scribblings of hundreds of cocktail napkins.

The children were housed for the five-day sessions, as they are today, in a modest Aspen hotel.

The group’s meetings were held, as they are now, in a basement game room.

The food--lots of pizza and subs--was delivered.

Then something happened. Los Angeles started it, but others spread it too, this sudden buzz about a place that could make sick children feel whole.

Land was donated. Ted Forstmann, notable financier, wrote a foundation-laying check.

TV caught on, with stories appearing from national sports channels to newsmagazines. Other newspapers caught on.

In a sports landscape dotted with bad news, the good news spread as quick as a coach slapping.

Even a local Aspen tradition--a 24-hour ski marathon--signed up. This year the event raised about $1 million for the group, bringing Jaeger to tears.

And now . . . well, the ranch house’s exterior is complete. But there are no floors or furniture or fixtures.

Kids’ Stuff Foundation, which runs the camps and consists of mostly the counselors, has moved its offices into a couple of rooms in the house.

But sometimes the staff uses an outdoor portable toilet.

Everything has stopped for the holidays, and there’s still about $500,000 needed to finish the building, but there’s hope.

If Jaeger’s group of friends has always possessed one thing, other than constant smiles, it’s permanent hope.

“You know it’s funny, but we never cry at the sad things,” said Kevin Smyley, the attorney-turned-counselor and one of only five paid staffers, among them Jaeger. “We cry at the happy things.”

They can picture the children out front playing with giant mechanical elephants.

When a contributor chided Jaeger for not being true to the surroundings by using bears, she replied, “But a bear can’t squirt water on you.”

They can picture wheelchair-bound children meeting able children halfway across a specially designed swimming pool.

And they can picture the handprints of every child who will come through the front door, embedded into tiles that will form a walkway around the giant mountain home.

You may remember, even though some children from each of their sessions die young, the counselors here don’t go to funerals.

“These handprints will come alive, allow these kids to be with us forever,” said Smyley. “That’s what we’re about here. We’re about life.”

Happy holidays from Andrea’s kids, where, just before the end of the winter session, one of them wants to tell you a story.

She is Robin Caesar, 17, from the Bronx in New York City. The one with the hard black headband and soft eyes.

Her mother was watching TV at 4 a.m. one fall night, fretting over her daughter’s battle with Hodgkin’s disease, when she saw a story about Jaeger.

Robin had been struggling with chemotherapy. She had been crying over the loss of her hair, the loss of her “friends.”

Another charitable group had offered to fulfill her greatest wish, and she snapped.

“I told them, ‘I don’t want to make a last wish, I’m getting better,’ ” she said. “I felt so different . . . “

So when Robin’s mother saw the story about Jaeger, she called toll-free information, obtained the phone number, and called the camp.

Soon thereafter, Robin was stepping off a plane in Aspen into the warm arms of absolute strangers.

“This is the part about the camp that you don’t believe,” she said. “It’s like, they don’t even know you, and they love you.”

Five days later, at the airport, preparing to board a plane with the other campers, she was crying, but happy this time.

“You know,” she said, “it’s OK to be different.”

With that, she and the others hugged Jaeger--”Don’t say good-bye, say, ‘See ya later!’ “--and walked across the runway to the small jet.

Only, the session wasn’t finished yet.

Jaeger, who was flying to Los Angeles to meet with some potential donors, had secretly booked passage on the same plane.

When all her kids were aboard, she bounded through the gate in her typical baggy black sweatsuit and prepared to sprint into the plane like a Cracker Jack surprise.

“Can you imagine what the kids are gonna say when they see me?” she said moments before leaving, giggling at the thought. “I mean, can you imagine?”

Hang around these people long enough, and you can imagine just about anything.

Including a new, permanent address of 1490 Ute Ave., Aspen, CO 81611.

And a room there with your name on it.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com