CHOC Benefit: Some Walk in Patients’ Shoes

Five months ago, Heather Larson was just another student at Glassell School in Orange. Heather, 8, played soccer on the asphalt and was unusually bright. She lived at her father’s home in Orange County and was getting ready to spend the summer with her mother in Cincinnati.

One night in June, Heather’s throat swelled up, making it hard for her to breathe. Her father, John, took her to the emergency room.

There, doctors would tell him that lymphoma is what caused Heather’s swollen throat. In fact, the little girl had tumors in an area stretching from her jawbone to her pelvic bone.

Heather’s mother, Robin Sanker, was called at 3 a.m. Cincinnati time. Two hours later, she was on a plane heading for Orange County.

What followed were months of chemotherapy that left Heather virtually bedridden.

But on Sunday, at the 10th annual fund-raising 5K walk for Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Heather looked like her old self as she chased her little brother down the street. She’s back at home now, working with a tutor.

“She’s doing good,” Sanker said. “I’m proud of her.”

Heather, her parents and her two younger siblings were among an estimated 12,000 people who walked a 3-mile loop circling South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa on Sunday morning to raise money for the hospital.

The event has grown every year.

“It’s one of those word-of-mouth things,” said Suki Carter, co-chairwoman of the walk.

In the previous nine years, the hospital has made $2.7 million from donations from the walkers’ sponsors, Carter said.

This year, the fund-raiser is expected to bring in even more than last year’s record $600,000.

An explosion of paper streamers rained down on the crowd to start the walk. Teams of walkers represented local businesses, schools and patients at the hospital.

More than 300 of the walkers were there on behalf of Conor Foster, a patient with a brain tumor that has gone into remission and who also walked in the event, organizers said.

Heather walked with silvery shoes, wearing a white Disney cap covering her short hair, just growing back after chemotherapy.

“Sometimes it’s hard,” she said of her disease, “but you still have to have a normal life.”

She said the worst thing about being sick is having to stay in the hospital.

But Heather and her parents said they were grateful to Children’s Hospital for bringing Heather’s disease into remission.

“This hospital has done so much to help her and save her,” Sanker said. Walking “is the least we can do.”