Helping Single Moms of Terminally Ill Children

When cancer took Valerie Sobel’s 16-year-old son, Andre, she imagined how much more devastated she would have been without her husband’s support. Then one year later, her husband, depressed over Andre’s death, committed suicide.

Sobel, whose husband had been a wealthy lawyer, used half his life insurance money and a good chunk of her own fortune to create the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation, dedicated to the single mothers of terminally ill children.

“I know these mothers,” said Sobel. “And I know what they need.”

What they need are groceries between paychecks and rent payments before eviction. Sometimes they need taxi fares to and from the hospital and gifts for their sick children.

The Sobel Foundation has served 120 families since its founding two years ago and disbursed nearly $600,000 in aid. Social workers at Childrens Hospital, the City of Hope in Duarte, Miller’s Children’s Hospital in Long Beach and the Institute for Families refer cases to the Sobel Foundation.

The foundation started with a $10-million endowment that recently shrank to $6.5 million due to the downturn in the economy. Still, Sobel says, the foundation has accepted every single request so far.

“It’s not a big mission--we’re not going to find a cancer cure or anything like that,” said Sobel. “We’re just going to help one pain at a time, one crisis at a time. We’re not about becoming national or making big waves. We’re just softening the crisis, not saving the world.”

Among those who have benefited is Yolanda Estrada. Her 20-year-old daughter, Corina, had her first bout with leukemia when she was 14 and had a relapse in February. Yolanda Estrada has a husband, but he’s been disabled since he had an aneurysm a year ago. Caring for her daughter and husband left Estrada unable to work, and medical expenses drained her bank accounts.

Estrada also has twin boys in high school, a 6-year-old son and two mortgages on her Anaheim house.

“We couldn’t pay our mortgages,” Estrada said. So the Sobel Foundation paid them for her, three months in a row.

“We would have lost our house if it wasn’t for them,” Estrada said. And when the stress got to be too much, the foundation paid for a caregiver to stay with Estrada’s family and paid for her to take a weeklong vacation in Las Vegas.

When Sylvia Salazar’s 8-year-old daughter died of brain cancer, her surviving daughter, Sandra, 14, was so depressed that she wouldn’t attend school.

“I was just locked in my room under the bed,” Sandra said. Her mother called Valerie Sobel and told her about her daughter. Sobel called back and asked Sandra what would help her out of her sadness.

“I chose to play an instrument--a guitar,” she said. The foundation paid for her $80 acoustic guitar and for weekly lessons for the last year. “I play a lot of old rock, Beatles and stuff.”

Sobel calls her foundation’s method “organic” and has initiated the organization’s first fund-raising drive.

“I want mothers to be able to concentrate on the treatment of their children,” said Sobel.

The Los Angeles Times is highlighting local programs that serve youths and families in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties as part of its Holiday Campaign to help raise money for worthy causes.

The program is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, which includes the long-running summer camp program. The McCormick Tribune Foundation will match the first $500,000 in donations at 50 cents on the dollar, and The Times will absorb all administrative costs.

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THE TIMES HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN

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