He Brings a Giggle to Ill Children

Before each of his visits to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, character actor and hospital volunteer Todd Susman looks into his car’s rearview mirror and reminds himself: “This is not funny.”

Then he stuffs lollipops into his pockets, grabs his ukulele and blue bag of tricks and takes off for a few hours of trying to make sick children smile.

“This is not truly altruistic. Doing this feeds my soul,” said Susman, 53, who has appeared in “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Newhart” and “ER” but is probably best known these days as the tutu-wearing “Tooth Fairy” pitching toothbrushes in television commercials.

Susman practically owns the halls at Childrens Hospital. Nearly every doctor or nurse he encounters greets him with a handshake or high-five. But it is a smile he wants most from the kids--many of whom have been hospitalized for weeks and will remain there through the holidays.

As he enters each room, they look to him in wonderment. What does he have up his sleeve today? A magic trick, a joke or a song strummed on the ukulele accompanied by a battery-operated parrot?

Each incites giggles and laughter but clearly a favorite is rigging the nurses’ station with a remote-control device that makes a sound like . . . well, er . . . flatulence.

“Where did that noise come from?” said a bewildered nurse, laughing. “That noise has Todd written all over it!”

Susman and 10-year-old Malcolm Cuevas, who has bone cancer, hid from sight with the remote, giggling. The nurses put down their files and phones and played along, pretending to search high and low for the offending sound’s origin.

“I’ve never seen it done better, my friend,” Susman said to Malcolm, who stood in the doorway with his IV tree in tow.

The two congratulated themselves on their perfectly executed gag and exchanged a high-five. Malcolm’s mother, Autumn Cuevas, laughed.

Malcolm has been commuting to the hospital from Santa Maria, about 160 miles to the north, for treatment since last summer when he was diagnosed. The week before Thanksgiving, doctors removed the cancer from Malcolm’s left arm, leaving a scar from his shoulder to his elbow. He has 10 more rounds of chemotherapy to go, Cuevas said. But his prognosis is good. In a few days, the family will know if he will be able to go home for Christmas.

A few rooms away, 22-month-old Meghan Torp awaits a Dec. 26 bone marrow transplant, thanks to her 4-year-old brother, Zachary, who will donate his marrow for the operation. Because her immune system has been compromised by chemotherapy to treat her leukemia, the toddler is in an isolation room to protect her from bacteria.

But that didn’t stop Susman. He managed to get a smile from the child with a Christmas song--even though he could only serenade her from the doorway.

“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better watch out, I’m telling you why . . .,” he sang. “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Here and there, Susman changed the words to personalize the song for the little girl. Meghan’s mother, Sylvia Torp, seemed to enjoy the moment as much as her daughter. The few minutes were a much needed respite from hours of watching a toddler in a small hospital room.

Susman acknowledged much of his deadpan humor--even the giant runny nose that he dons occasionally--is to help parents.

“I went through this,” he said. “I walked through their shoes.”

Susman began volunteering at the hospital about two years ago after his son, Albert, then 14, had surgery there to remove a brain tumor.

After Albert recovered and was back in school playing football at Chatsworth High, Susman was committed to helping children at the hospital, he said.

“If a child has mumps or measles or breaks a nose here or there, that’s one thing,” he said. “But that’s not what these children have at Childrens Hospital. I didn’t know what to do to strike a blow against the maladies I saw, but I knew I had to try.”

The hospital is known as an international leader in children’s medicine. Many of the patients suffer from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer or cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system.

After a rigorous application process--which included classes on how to work best with sick children and a background check--Susman began showing up at the hospital three or four times a week.

“Some of these children really find their way into your heart,” he said.

Most eventually go home. But sometimes they don’t. Only once was Susman moved to tears, when he discovered that a teenage girl he had been visiting in ICU for a few months had died of cancer.

“She was very sweet,” he said. “She was just always a tickle away from a smile.”

So overwhelmed that the girl was gone, Susman bolted for the elevator to leave. He stopped halfway down the hall, thinking about the patients, their parents and the nurses and doctors who work there daily.

“They have this emotional stuff every day,” he said he told himself. “They don’t need anything from you except a little silliness.”

He wiped his eyes, turned himself around and made his way back to the nurses station asking: “Who needs a visitor today?”

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