Getting a Shot in the Arm

An office supply executive, who worked his way up from taking orders in a Chicago warehouse, has agreed to donate $36 million to the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte.

The donation from Irwin Helford, by far the largest ever at the world-renowned cancer research center, will help build a new $154-million hospital to replace the current 50-year-old building, said City of Hope President Gil N. Schwartzberg.

“It’s a wonderful gesture of philanthropy,” he said. “Helford’s gift is a major milestone for us and will allow us to complete funding for the hospital.”

Helford, 64, of Rolling Hills, is chairman of Viking Office Products and vice chairman of Office Depot, which merged in 1998 and share combined annual revenues of more than $9 billion.

On Wednesday, he sealed the deal with City of Hope, where he has long worked as a fund-raiser. He said that he was touched by the compassion and quality of care he has seen at City of Hope and that his generosity was prompted by a need for more caring medical treatment in an era when hospitals seem money-driven and callous.

Individual rooms in the new hospital will be private, large enough to accommodate family members, and able to handle some medical procedures like bone marrow transplants. The 144-bed hospital, which is scheduled to open in 2004, will be named after Helford and his wife, Betty, officials said.

“As you can imagine, [this donation] took an awful lot of thought,” Helford said. “There was a time when I only made $100 a week. . . . But I thought of it as a way for my family to be associated with City of Hope.”

Helford’s donation is partially the result of a growing effort by the hospital to cultivate larger philanthropists, according to Schwartzberg. Historically, the fund-raisers relied on smaller donations from thousands of contributors, while other cancer centers courted fewer, wealthier patrons.

“There’s no reason we can’t do both,” Schwartzberg said. “Today there’s a lot more people of wealth looking for worthwhile causes.”

Last year, the Hilton Foundation donated $10 million to City of Hope, the largest sum given up to that time, he said.

The institution’s traditionally populist approach to treatment and fund-raising dates back to its founding in 1913 by Jewish labor unions, which sought treatment for tuberculosis patients shunned by other facilities because of anti-Semitism. Today, a fourth of all money spent on medical care at the center goes to those who cannot afford it, officials said.

Much of City of Hope’s funding now comes from patents generated by research, including those for synthetic insulin and human growth hormones. About one-fourth comes from donations.

Helford grew up in a middle-class Chicago family that ran a barbecue restaurant for three generations. He dropped out of college to join the Navy for a brief stint during the Korean War and never returned to get his degree.

He married, had a child and began work manufacturing office supplies. He soon became manager of Reliable Stationery in Chicago, where he stayed 23 years and saw it grow into a $40-million company.

In 1983, he moved to California to head Viking, then a $13-million company. Now, it does about $1.6 billion in sales, he said.

Helford serves on the Office Products Council, which raises money within the industry for the medical center, and previously donated $2 million to the institution.

He said he was deeply moved one day at the hospital when he met a girl, 11, with no money or insurance who was cured of a grapefruit-size tumor on her hip. Her name was Hannah, the same as his mother and granddaughter. “I’ve been hooked ever since,” he said.