With apologies to Talbots Kids, it really doesn’t matter what the models wear at the Little Hearts Luncheon and Fashion Show. What everyone really comes to see is the adorable youngsters – all of whom stared heart disease in the eye and didn’t blink – happily walk or skip the length of the catwalk in the Pepsi Center’s Ridgeline Restaurant.
The fact they’re alive is often a miracle in itself. Being able to show off outfits from the sponsoring retailer, with their hair coiffed by stylists from Great Clips, is merely the icing on the cake.
Little Hearts is a benefit for the Children’s Hospital Heart Institute, and was chaired by Lyn Schaffer. Her husband, Michael, is director of the arrhythmia and electrophysiology programs at Children’s; their daughter, Sara, is a former heart patient.
The models included six transplant recipients: Wade Erwin, 8; Damian Morales and Lauren Granados, both 4; Angel Rivera and Mackayla Villano, both 5; and Karina Rodriguez, 10. They, along with 30 other models, represented the 347 kids who had heart surgery at Children’s last year.
Lauren’s cheering section included her parents, Alberta and Jesus Granados; her 12-year-old sister, Yarely; and 8-year-old brother, Jesus, Jr., whose leukemia is being treated at Children’s.
Former Little Hearts chairwoman Edie Bell’s daughter, Lindsey, made the commemorative plates that Schaffer presented to representatives from Talbots and Great Clips, and to the hospital’s staff photographer, Steve Kast, for their longstanding support.
Schaffer’s husband, recipient of the inaugural Fern Primack Heart Who Cares Award, presented the 2005 honor to Esther Carpenter, one of the hospital’s cardiac surgery nurse-clinicians. The award honors the memory of Fern Primack, legendary volunteer work on behalf of Little Hearts and other agencies serving children with heart disease was a thank you for the good care her granddaughter had received as an infant. Primack died two years ago.
Members of South Metro Fire Department served as model-escorts, along with several of the hospital’s surgeons and medical product providers. Their young charges included Spencer Corley, Risa Campanaro, Francisca and Shauna Pierre-Louis, Mackenzie Barnes and Avery Pennington. Dunbar Ivy, chief of pediatric cardiology; Henry Sondheimer, director of outpatient pediatric cardiology; Max Mitchell, associate professor of follow-up surgery for infant heart transplants; and Kak-Chen Chan, director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory, were among the doctors taking a turn on the runway.
Society editor Joanne Davidson can be reached at 303-820-1314 or jmdpost@aol.com.
