Pain can’t stop this busy bee

When 17-year-old Vanessa Bombelea tore a ligament in her knee last year, the first thing she asked her doctor was if she would be well enough to attend camp in four months. Considering her rheumatoid arthritis, he told her it wasn’t likely, but if she “worked extra hard to recover,” it might be possible.

The high school senior was determined to make it to Camp Coulter Pines, so she did everything the doctor said to do and more.

“It helped me to realize that anything I set my mind to, if I have a lot of will and strength, that I can do it.”

Not only was the teen able to go, but she stayed a second week to train to be a counselor. “The Y is like my second home, basically,” said Vanessa, who started going to camp with the San Gabriel Valley Family YMCA when she was 10.

“I wouldn’t be able to go and take her to the mountains, only because of my job,” said her mother, Evelyn Bombelea, who works at the same Y. “The days that I do have off are for her doctors appointments. Vacation days or sick days, that’s what I can afford.”

Vanessa has been spending this week at the Wrightwood camp thanks to the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Fund.

Since her diagnosis two years ago, Vanessa has been taking daily medication for inflammation and pain, but sometimes the arthritic pain persists.

“It gets me down on days where it hurts so bad that I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do,” Vanessa said. “If I am feeling this bad, there are always kids out there that are feeling 10 times worse than I do, that can’t get out of bed -- and I can.”

So she keeps busy, volunteering at the Y’s after-school program and working part time as a cashier to help her single mom with the utility bills. She also visits her grandmother, who has cancer, twice a week to cook, clean and read to her.

Bombelea attributes her daughter’s maturity partly to camp, where she has had the opportunity to meet kids from a variety of backgrounds. Vanessa added that the communal, supportive camp also helped her develop self-assurance.

She fondly recalled the goofy dances that she -- like the other campers -- has had to perform at mail call to receive her letters.

Most of the time the director calls for the funky chicken, the “bushy, bushy-tailed squirrel” or the “dying cockroach,” she said.

However, sometimes he’ll have the kids get down on their knees and bow, hands outstretched, while exclaiming, “you’re the best camp director.”

Vanessa can go through the motions easily, explaining: “My mom sends a lot of mail.”

*

About 11,000 children will go to camp this summer thanks to the $1.4 million raised last year.

The annual fund-raising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make credit card donations,

visit www.latimes.com/summercamp. To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash. Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $25 or more are acknowledged in The Times.