{"id":18756,"date":"2017-10-25T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T20:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18756"},"modified":"2017-10-25T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T20:20:10","slug":"daughters-legacy-allows-local-family-to-make-20k-donation-to-sickkids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/daughters-legacy-allows-local-family-to-make-20k-donation-to-sickkids\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughter\u2019s legacy allows local family to make $20K donation to SickKids"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toronto\u2019s Hospital For Sick Children became a second home to the Watkin family.
\nAt the hospital day in and day out as their daughter Sarah received treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, they soon found everything they needed was there as Sarah bravely fought for life.
\nTragically, Sarah lost her fight in 2014 but her legacy lives on through community-led and student-led initiatives throughout York Region fighting for a cure.
\nThis past December, the Skate for Sarah fundraiser took place once again, raising a whopping $20,900 for charity. While the previous year\u2019s proceeds went to support kids who couldn\u2019t afford to participate in organized sports, this year the family decided to give back to their \u201csecond home,\u201d and made the emotional presentation to SickKids last week.
\n\u201cSickKids was not just a home,\u201d says Mark, an Aurora resident and teacher at Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School. \u201cWhen Sarah was having a bad day, a clown just walked into her room magically and cheered her up. There were days when she had about a 107 fever for a week and you could see the pain in her eyes. SickKids brought in clowns, massage therapists, whoever needed to be with her.
\n\u201cI remember hours upon hours of me and my wife crying and there was always a nurse to talk to, someone who just cared. We wanted SickKids to put the money towards funding some sort of research and hopefully they can come up with a new drug, a new trial, a new something because right now when you\u2019re diagnosed with AML leukemia, your success rate is, at best, 50 per cent and then your odds go down fairly quickly.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s what happened to Sarah. We can\u2019t save Sarah\u2019s life, but maybe we can save someone else\u2019s life.\u201d
\nMark Watkin has been a teacher at Williams for two years. Before he joined the school\u2019s faculty, however, he was already a familiar face to many students.
\nThe Dr. G.W. Williams community is one which embraced Sarah and her cause fairly early on, long before her passing.
\nStudents formed \u201cSarah\u2019s Stars\u201d which spearheaded numerous in-school initiatives \u2013 and initiatives that spread well beyond Williams\u2019 walls \u2013 in Sarah\u2019s honour, including a \u201cswabbing\u201d drive aimed to get community members registered on the National Bone Marrow registry with a simple cheek swab.
\nSarah\u2019s passing steeled the students\u2019 resolve to make a difference her name and those programs endure to this day.
\n\u201cSarah really hit a nerve with so many people,\u201d says Mr. Watkin. \u201cWhen we started posting about her on Facebook, there were about half a million views. As a result, so many people were watching and just wanted to do something. One of the people who approached me asked if he could use our daughter\u2019s name for something positive. As long as we can use Sarah\u2019s name for something good in this world, why not?
\n\u201cYou have a child, hope they grow up and so forth, but we entered a world I hope no parent ever enters. When your child has cancer, everything changes. Everything has forever been changed.\u201d|
\nSarah\u2019s Drive For Hope started off with the simple premise of encouraging people to donate blood. When it became evident Sarah might need a bone marrow transplant, their focus shifted to increasing the ranks of the National Bone Marrow registry as neither of Sarah\u2019s parents were matches.
\nAs a teacher, Mark made a few calls and students were soon on board lending their hands \u2013 and their cheeks \u2013 for the cause
\nThat started a groundswell and two years ago every high school across the York Region District School Board had swabbing drives.
\n\u201cI have actually met some of those students who are matches,\u201d says Mark. \u201cThey have been contacted by One Match to say they are a match and can save a life. I know there have been eight matches so far and it is phenomenal to know that even though we weren\u2019t able to save Sarah\u2019s life, maybe someone else out there can be saved.\u201d
\nBut swabbing drives have slowed down, they are often taking place every other year, but Mr. Watkin is looking to raise that momentum once again.
\n\u201cI really want to make sure Aurora knows how important and how easy it is to get on the bone marrow registry,\u201d says Mr. Watkin, adding that he wants to arrange a high school swabbing campaign backed by all four high schools in Aurora. \u201cI think that\u2019s what hinders a lot of people, thinking bone marrow and thinking pain, needles and sawing something off you. If more people knew it was really a Q-Tip in the mouth, I think everyone would get on the registry. It just takes a minute of your time and everyone can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto\u2019s Hospital For Sick Children became a second home to the Watkin family.
\nAt the hospital day in and day out as their daughter Sarah received treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, they soon found everything they needed was there as Sarah bravely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2017-10-26-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4Sw","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-20 03:12:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}