Wish Book: Jacob’s Heart, delivering help and compassion to kids with cancer and their families, seeks Santa Clara County expansion
Everywhere you turn at Jacob’s Heart, you find love, compassion, joy and hope rising above the sickness, struggle and sorrow that are the reasons it exists.
Walk down a 30-foot hallway through a mosaic of photos showing hundreds upon hundreds of children with parents, siblings, and staff from Jacob’s Heart, each image holding a story that starts with cancer and ends in triumph or in grief.
Take a turn past Maddy’s Jungle, where toddlers frolic across the room’s tiger-print carpet, ride stuffed-animal rockers and play with toys in front of a wall covered in an animal-filled forest scene. The room is named for the little girl who was among the first kids served by Jacob’s Heart to pass away. Maddy loved jungle creatures.
Pause before Art from the Heart, a section of wall showcasing the work of bereaved siblings. There’s a cheerful goldfish, beside handprints from a sister and brother named Angela and Alex, and a green flower against a pastel background painted for Janet by Noemi, who drew a heart by her sister’s name.
Head over to the volunteer room, and check out decorations added to brown shopping bags to brighten the days of the children and families who receive weekly grocery deliveries to help them through unimaginably hard times. You’ll see bunnies, and rainbows, and nearby, you’ll find the cards that healthy kids make to be mailed to kids who are sick: One has two penguins with a heart between them and a message that says, “Let’s stick together.” Another has a sheep with googly eyes and a message in Spanish saying, “There’s no one like you.”
Take a look at the mural in the Full Hearts room where volunteers bag groceries. The artwork shows a majestic lion, its mane surrounded by a heart. After Johnny Robledo died at 16, his cousin painted the mural, adding beside the lion some words Johnny left behind so people would know he didn’t depart this world in defeat: “I want people to know that I was here and that I fought.”
Poke around Caroline’s Closet, a room full of clothing from a partner thrift store. You’ll see clothing for all ages, plus necessities like soap, cleaners and toothpaste. In a stack are about a dozen volunteer-knitted beanies to fit babies suffering the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. “Beanies are a big request when the kiddies start losing their hair,” says family support specialist Daniela Ramirez.
Stop in front of the large pinboard map showing the region from San Francisco south to King City. Each of the multitudinous pins represents a child with cancer whom Jacob’s Heart has helped, colored according to the type of cancer. Most of the pins are clustered in Watsonville, Santa Cruz and Salinas, within the Watsonville-based nonprofit’s primary coverage area. Jacob’s Heart is seeking $40,000 to bolster its services — and to start offering its help throughout Santa Clara County.
For parents whose child receives a cancer diagnosis, troubles pile onto fears and worries: Caring for the young girl or boy — whose life has been catastrophically altered by a life-threatening or terminal illness, and who may be hospitalized for months at a time and require treatments far from home — becomes all-consuming. A parent, sometimes a single parent, often has to quit their job. For the families Jacob’s Heart serves, many with low incomes, there’s not enough money, not enough time. Siblings, already traumatized by the knowledge their beloved family member may die, can feel neglected, putting more pressure on distressed mothers and fathers already struggling to meet one child’s now-vast needs.
Sebastian Van Deren of Gilroy was diagnosed in August 2020 with a rare brain cancer a week before his sophomore year in high school was to start. The diagnosis sent the Van Deren family into “hell on earth,” says Sebastian’s mother Andrea, 43, a yoga teacher and photographer. “Your whole world just falls out from underneath you,” she says. Sebastian’s father James recalls watching his healthy and active son turn sick and weak from the cancer and the side-effects of radiation and chemotherapy. “We were happy when he would eat two grapes,” says James, 52, an electrician.
A school district nurse connected the family with Jacob’s Heart, and the organization’s financial support, guidance and compassion helped the Van Derens through their two-year nightmare. Today, after two surgeries, trips as far as Ohio for precision radiation treatment, and six rounds of chemotherapy, Sebastian, 17, is cancer free, on the honor roll in high school, loves studying physics, rides his bike for miles around his Gilroy neighborhood, and continues attending teen events at Jacob’s Heart. “I’m just really glad to have who I have with me, especially my family, and Jacob’s Heart,” Sebastian says. “Everybody there is so kind.”
In operation for 25 years, Jacob’s Heart is named for another boy who survived cancer against long odds, whose mother had to leave her job to care for him. The organization serves upward of 350 families at any given time, working closely with the Bay Area healthcare facilities where young patients receive much of their treatment, including Stanford Medical Center, UC San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente. Jacob’s Heart relies on 14 full-time staff, a host of contractors, and hundreds of volunteers, like Tanner Tedsen, a local insurance agent who drops off groceries at families’ homes every week. “It’s all the cutest little kids you can imagine, running out to thank you,” Tedsen says.
The goals, at Jacob’s Heart, are fairly straightforward: to lighten the burdens on children and families from a life-changing diagnosis, and to bring light to lives suddenly shadowed. The nonprofit takes a wrap-around approach, embracing young patients and their families, from babies to grandparents, and helping them through every stage of illness, treatment and beyond.
“We have a saying: Once a Jacob’s Heart family, always a Jacob’s Heart family,” says Allyssa Gil-Ojeda, a coordinator at the nonprofit.
Jacob’s Heart’s offerings include family support in English and Spanish, professional counseling, peer mentorship, transportation to medical appointments, gas cards, grants for bills and funerals, social gatherings for teens, trips to the beach, zoo and amusement parks and Holiday Hearts seasonal gifts. It also provides an annual Forever Loved camp for parents and siblings who have lost a child to cancer, and an annual Camp Heart & Hands, staffed by Stanford pediatric nurses, for families and their children in treatment or remission.
The nonprofit also forges links — between families and other service providers, between kids and other kids who share a diagnosis that no other child can really understand, and between families sharing similar ordeals, including siblings going through traumatic events that have not touched their peers.
“What we really bring into a community is the social and emotional connection,” says Heidi Boynton, executive director of Jacob’s Heart and a cancer survivor. “Knowing that you’re not alone definitely changes things.”
Outside Jacob’s Heart on this particular day, up in the mountains between Watsonville and Gilroy, the Van Derens are camped in a county park among redwoods and oaks, with their two small dogs Dexter and Lincoln. They camp there often.
The family walks down the trail to the redwood they call Big Tree. It’s a dozen feet across at the base — blackened by fire, and bears scars from someone trying to cut it down. For the Van Derens, Big Tree has become part of the story of their trials. “I don’t know how it survived, but it did,” James says. Sebastian tips his head back and gazes upward. “Through it all, it’s just kept going,” he says. “Look at it. You can’t even see the top. This tree is just so tall.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has been producing series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.
WISH
Donations will help Jacob’s Heart expand support services and offer care for a minimum of 50 families, caring for children with cancer in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. Funds will pay for weekly deliveries of food, basic living supplies, crisis counseling, transportation to medical appointments, rental assistance and much more. Goal: $40,000.
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com or mail in the coupon.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com.