DSES Weekend Camp Makes Hearts Soar
One of the Camp del Corazon campers makes a furry friend from Mammoth Dog Teams
Thirty kids, ages eight to 13, all with heart ailments, including heart transplants and pacemakers and various other heart defects, attended Camp del Corazon March 11, 2006 on Mammoth Mountain.
Camp del Corazon provided outstanding medical support including a pediatric cardiologist, who was on hand at all times, as well as nurses and nurse practitionser.
Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra taught the kids how to ski (only five of them had seen snow before!). The volunteer crew of DSES rallied their support to get all the kids out on the slopes.
Mammoth Dog Teams generously donated both days of dog sledding for all the kids, and Jim, the team leader, wrapped them up in warm wool blankets and "mushed" the dogs on beautiful scenic rides.
Camp del Corazon is a southern California nonprofit organization that works toward making a difference in the lives of children with heart disease. Visit their website at www.campdelcorazon.org
DSES volunteers and campers had a wild and "Woolly" good time learning to ski on Mammoth Mountain
DSES received the following letter after the 2006 Camp Del Corazon event.
Once again I am blown away with the kindness and the expertise of your staff. Our many, many thanks for the wonderful time we had participating in your program last weekend. All our campers had the time of their life just beginning to learn how to ski or racing down the mountain many times. Your staff always made the campers feel like they just skied in the Olympics, no matter what their skills were and always had a special gift to make them feel like they just accomplished the impossible. Those brief moments in their lives are golden to us and were the highlight of the weekend.
For those of you that don’t know us, Camp Del Corazon is a nonprofit organization that runs among other things a camp, and year round activities for children with heart disease who are at a higher risk of incidents so they are not able to do activities that normal children take for granted without medical supervision. We started the Mammoth trip last year after our Development Director met Kathy Copeland the Director of Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra at a conference in Los Angeles. The only thing our director could say about Kathy was “You have to meet this person, she has so much energy!” which of course if you know Kathy is an understatement. She without a blink said bring them up we can take care of them!
Thanks to your staff, the kids had the best weekend of our life. You have an excellent program in place and we are grateful to have been participants. You run the best program, and we always will want to be a part of it. We will see you again soon! We are constantly trying to think of exciting adventures for our campers, and this one will definitely go on the list of "must do again". Time and time again we see heroism and kindness in volunteers and your group is heroes in our book, and want to again thank you for volunteering and our children thank you from the bottom of their hearts.
