Toy to the World: Bringing Childhood to Children Facing Cancer

I must be doing something wrong, I thought, slapping a sticker on a donated Barbie and placing it in a box. 

I mean, I must have been messing it up somehow. Volunteering is supposed to be tedious, boring, full of heavy lifting and weird smells. You're supposed to come home with your shoes full of silt or with something pulled that wasn't pulled before.

It's not supposed to be an afternoon enjoying classic rock, good conversation and the warm feeling of preparing donated toys for children with cancer. Volunteering isn't supposed to be... fun.

But that's exactly what volunteering at the Pediatric Oncology Treasure Chest Foundation was. And the foundation helps bring some of that fun to children across the country when they need it most.

Make no mistake: This is serious work. Oak Forest resident Colleen Kisel started the foundation in 1997, after her son was put into remission from a case of acute lymphocytic leukemia. He was diagnosed at 7 years old. By age 9, he had undergone 18 spinal taps and nine bone marrow aspirations.

The Treasure Chest stocks the closets and toy trunks of 39 cancer treatment centers nationwide, putting toys in the hands of about 7,600 children undergoing cancer treatments each month.

"Little ones, they don't know what cancer is. They just know that it hurts," Kisel said in .

When a child is going in for treatment, he or she picks out a toy. For larger procedures, the child gets to pick from larger toys. Smaller donations—crayons and the like—are packaged together in gift bags.

You're a kid. You're in the hospital. You don't really understand what's going on but know that your parents, guardians or any other rocks on which you rely seem scared. You're scared. You don't want to be there. You want what all kids want; you want to play.

One box of crayons, one doll, one truck, one basketball; any of those can make more difference than anyone older than 12 will ever understand.

So what's wrong with having some fun helping the Treasure Chest bring that into the world?

Kim Perchez of the foundation, Lauren Traut of Oak Forest Patch and I ran around like mad monkeys, stickering oceans of toys collected by from Southland schools, churches and other groups.

Never stopping our work, we laughed with each other ("I wish they had this when I was a kid," "Oh, man, this is cool," "Someone's going to really like this.") and listened to classic rock on the radio (Kim had, correctly in my opinion, put her foot down on Christmas music).

Cancer is serious. Children, by nature, aren't. Being all dire and dour preparing their toys would be, in my mind, making the cancer more important than the child. And that's just wrong.

Volunteer for this group. Do it for an hour, do it for a week, do it for a year. And don't just do it during the Christmastime rush of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. They need help all year.

Do it because it's good. Do it because it does good. Do it because they need the help and because you will be helping bring a scared child some comfort.

And, dang it, do it because it's fun.

Find out how to get involved with The Treasure Chest.