Loving caretaker, age 11, gets a respite from worry

Sharon Ramirez, 11, chases her two little sisters around the frontyard of their Glendale home, trying to wrangle the girls, who have a seemingly endless energy supply. One has been nicknamed “the Monkey” for her climbing ability. Despite Sharon’s efforts, the younger girls have made their way to the roof of their plastic playhouse.

“There’s something I should have told you earlier,” Sharon says, sitting down in a chair and speaking matter-of-factly. “My sisters are sick. Almost nothing in their body works.”

Sharon describes the effects of the cystic fibrosis that afflicts her sisters. Six-year-old Angelica’s pancreas is failing and she might need an operation soon. Both Angelica and Jennifer, 3, have been in and out of the hospital for up to a month at a time. Their mother stays with them during these prolonged hospital stays, while Sharon’s uncle helps out at home with her.

“Angelica gets a shot every month and she doesn’t cry,” Sharon says. “Sometimes I admire her. Jennifer will bite the nurses -- she doesn’t like the shots.”

On a recent Wednesday evening, Sharon has already begun to lay out her clothes to pack for this year’s 12-day stint at Camp Max Straus in Glendale, making sure to include jeans for riding horses and her favorite Tinker Bell purse and sweatshirt. For Sharon, camp gives her a break from her family’s daily struggle with disease to focus on just having fun.

Wearing tortoiseshell frames and bright coral nail polish, Sharon smiles as she displays an important camp milestone, a small scar on her leg where she injured herself after her first triumphant jump off the diving board. She learned to swim at camp. She admits to turning on the radio and dancing with her friends in the cabin during “rest time” and was eager to hold a hairy tarantula and a large snake around her neck.

“When they start fighting, I can’t wait for camp,” Sharon says of her sisters.

“It’s like a summer vacation for me. Mostly, I go to camp so my mind will go on vacation and forget about the problems,” she adds.

Sharon will be among the 12,000 children who will go to camp this summer, thanks to $2.1 million raised in the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign last year. Donations this season will ensure that just as many deserving children get the camp experience next summer.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.2 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771.

To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/summercamp.

To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash.

Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.