By John Przybys | Published originally in the Las Vegas Review Journal | Jul. 24th, 2010
Camp Cartwheel, sponsored by the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation for kids who have, had or are otherwise affected by cancer, might sound like the most depressing summer camp ever.
In fact, Jeffrey Gordon, the foundation’s president and chief executive officer, concedes that some first-time visitors are “like, ‘What a wonderful thing,’ but they’re always worried about, ‘Oh, it’s going to be so sad. It’s such a tearjerker.’ “
Then — not long after the first squirt gun-toting kid appears — they discover that Camp Cartwheel is, as Gordon puts it, “the happiest place on Earth.”
It’s the same story at other summer camps sponsored by Southern Nevada nonprofit organizations for kids who are coping with such experiences as life-threatening illnesses or the death of a loved one.
For many of those kids, summer camp will be a trip to Torino Ranch, a piece of away-from-it-all Shangri-La on the other side of the Spring Mountains where owner Brett Torino has been hosting specialized camps for 16 years.
This summer, Torino Ranch already has hosted Camp Firefly (Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Nevada), Camp Independence (Hemophilia Foundation of Nevada) and Camp Mariposa (Nathan Adelson Hospice). Camp Cartwheel, Camp SuperKids (American Lung Association of Nevada) and Camp TLC (Peoples Autism Foundation) will fill out the rest of summer’s dance card.
Torino Ranch offers campers such amenities as cabins, a lake for canoeing and swimming, and a climbing wall. It also offers facilities — a medical building, for instance, and special equipment that enables wheelchair-bound kids to scale that climbing wall — created or kept on hand specifically for the campers it serves.
The camps often provide a camping experience to children who might not otherwise have one.
For example, many campers at the lung association’s Camp SuperKids have asthma. In many cases, camp director Lisa Chase notes, a child “might be excluded from a (traditional) camp if they have to have certain medications or treatment. That’s not true here.”
Kids at Camp Cartwheel “can forget about the doctors and the nurses and the hospitals and the needles and, under our medical supervision, can do things they cannot do anywhere else, not even at home. That’s why it’s such a magical week for these children,” Gordon says.
For some, simply being able to feel like any other kid will be a new and welcome experience.
A few weeks ago, Candlelighters hosted almost 100 children at the seventh edition of Camp Firefly. Melissa Cipriano, the organization’s executive director, notes that young cancer patients can experience “a lot of isolation” because of their illness.
Camp is “a way to bring kids together,” she says, and “take them out of their environment and give them a place where they can be a kid and enjoy nature.”
Tanya Sotelo’s son, Angel, 8, has a form of anemia and is awaiting a bone marrow transplant. This week, he’ll head to Torino Ranch with about 135 other children for his third visit to Camp Cartwheel. Sotelo says it helps for Angel to be “with kids who are in the same situation,” to know that “he’s not the only one going through this.”
Just as important, she continues, is that staff members “don’t treat (Angel) as a sick child. They treat him as a normal child, which is really awesome.”
Camp Mariposa, sponsored by Nathan Adelson Hospice, serves children who have lost a loved one. Carole Fisher, the agency’s president and CEO, says the camp’s schedule includes activities to help kids “get in touch with their feelings and know they’re not alone.”
Venus Walker’s daughters lost their father to prostate cancer in January 2009. After the girls attended Camp Mariposa last year, Walker noticed that they had let go of “some of the heaviness or the confusion.”
Sisters Kortni, 11, and Leah, 12, recall a ceremony at which they wrote messages to their dad, put the notes in a fire and watched as their words rose into the sky.
After camp, Leah says, “I think I felt relief that I don’t have to hold that (sadness) in me.”
But that doesn’t mean kids dwell on whatever brought them to camp. Luci LaMonica, 12, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006, completed her treatment in 2009, and this year attended Camp Firefly for the first time. Luci says she and her fellow campers didn’t talk much about cancer.
Camp “was all about forgetting that,” she explains. “It’s sort of like a vacation from thinking about it all the time, which is sort of ironic because it’s a camp for that.”
The camps are staffed by a roster of volunteers that includes parents, doctors and nurses who donate their time on-site, and even former campers.
Counselors make every day “a special day,” says Sherry Drewes, whose 10-year-old son, Holden, has been in remission from leukemia for almost eight years and this summer will make his fifth return to Camp Cartwheel. “They understand that some of these kids will actually fight harder in their treatment just so they can come to camp.”
This year, the entire Drewes family will be at Camp Cartwheel, the kids as campers, mom Sherry working in arts and crafts, and dad Bryan as a boys’ counselor.
The camps are offered at either a nominal fee or no fee at all, thanks to donors and contributions from the sponsoring organizations.
However, organizers note that even a fee and donated materials come nowhere close to covering the actual costs of camp. For example, Cipriano says it costs Candlelighters about $500 for each camper at Camp Firefly.
“There are a lot of things we have to pay for that people don’t realize. … Feeding 200 people (campers and staff) for five days straight can get costly,” she says.
But the return on that investment can be counted in all sorts of ways.
For Sotelo, it can be counted in the mementos Angel has in his bedroom “of every camp from every year. Stuff he’s made. He’s kept all his shirts. Arts and crafts. And the yearbook.”
The return can be counted in Luci LaMonica’s plans for next year when, she says, she’ll be sure to pack some duct tape. (Don’t ask.)
And, the return can be counted in the photos displayed in places where they really shouldn’t be.
Torino says the value of the camps he hosts at his ranch hit home when he saw the photos parents displayed at the funerals of a few of his former guests.
All, Torino says, were “pictures of their kids at our ranch. That’s pretty compelling.”
Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.
