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By Meredith Pack
Think back to when you were a kid. The world around you was huge, people were unfair, and everything mattered, right?
Now, pretend you’ve been diagnosed with a horrifically painful disease and told you have only a few more years to live. The only bright side is that you have one wish, any wish you could think of, to allow you to make the most out of the short time you have left. Would you take it for yourself, or choose to use it for other children in need?
Marlee Pack was only eight years old when she was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a brutal cancer of the soft tissue, bone, or connective tissue with a five-year survival rate ranging as low as 20-30%. Despite the severity of her illness, she made the choice to use her Make-A-Wish in order to set up a Build-A-Bear station in the oncology ward of Colorado Children’s Hospital so that the kids with cancer like herself could spend the day making stuffed animals for themselves. Marlee passed away in 2018 at only 12 years old. Inspired by her selflessness, her family and close friends decided to start the Marlee’s Smile Foundation in her honor. Their mission? To provide every child suffering from pediatric cancer with a stuffed animal, and to fund pediatric cancer research in order to prevent any more children from suffering the way Marlee did.
I sat down with Marlee’s Smile’s Chief Development Officer, Stacie Winslow in order to learn just how Marlee’s Smile Foundation plans to go about achieving these goals beginning with their homefront in Denver, Colorado in 2023.
Q: First of all, what did you do before you began working with Marlee’s Smile?
Winslow: I’ve mostly worked at non-profits, focusing on fundraising. I was with Make-A-Wish Colorado prior to Marlee’s Smile and before that I was a volunteer fundraiser at my daughter’s schools working on projects to help bridge the gap between their needs and district funding. I guess I like raising money for things that are important to me!
Q: And how did you meet Marlee?
Winslow: I met Marlee when she was a Wish Kid at Make-A-Wish Colorado. I’d convinced a pretty popular chef in town to auction off a cooking class as a fundraiser and he said he would only do it if the person who bought it included a Wish Family. I read in Marlee’s file that she liked cooking, so I invited her! She had this tiny little body and crutches that were kind of hard for her to navigate and the funniest, deepest voice. I fell in love with her and her family that day. They were just really amazing people.
Q: How did you come to take part in Marlee’s Smile?
Winslow: Well, I loved everything about her over the four years I knew her. And this is kind of hard to say, but when she was dying–and she knew she was–she asked me to keep helping other kids. She did archery as a hobby and told me that an arrow most represented her because she knew her course and direction and wanted to keep moving toward comfort and cures for kids with cancer. I guess that’s a long way of saying I promised her I’d be involved. And I am lucky that her family allows me to be involved and carry on her legacy.
Q: Why should Marlee’s Smile matter to the people living in Denver?
Winslow: Everyone knows someone with cancer. Most of us probably know a child with cancer. Especially in the time during covid when hospitals instituted new restrictions on visitation, it’s hard for most people to imagine sending a child off to a scan, a chemo treatment, a port access–any hospital appointment really–alone. They should care about Marlee’s Smile because we are putting stuffed animal building stations in pediatric hospitals so patients can build a furry friend to help ease the scary parts of hospital procedures. And we fund targeted research that is saving lives– we are getting kids in clinical trials and treating cancers that were previously thought untreatable. We are literally saving lives. People should care because Marlee lived with cancer, she faced the struggles, she knew the battle and she told us what to do. We are making progress and we can’t stop.
Q: What kinds of differences has Marlee’s Smile made in the lives of children with cancer in Colorado?
Winslow: We’ve offered free events for pediatric cancer patients so they can get out of the hospital. We have put hundreds of furry friends into the arms of cancer patients. And we have funded rhabdomyosarcoma research right here in Denver. I think that’s what makes me most proud: that local researchers have funding to target novel treatments for Marlee’s specific cancer.
Q: What’s new for Marlee’s Smile in 2023?
Winslow: Hopefully we are free and clear of covid restrictions that have limited us for two years! More events– including in other states. We will be putting our first custom stuffed animal stations in hospitals. We hope that a recent $50,000 donation to the pediatric cancer “Dream Team” at Stanford enrolls more kids and continues its successes– there has been hope for DiPG tumors in kids for the first time ever and that could unlock the secret to treating lots of other rare cancers. We hope to streamline our furry friend program and get into more children’s hospitals around the country. I want to see more involvement on college campuses– I believe that the future of philanthropy is in this younger generation.
Q: I think so too. How can we get involved? Winslow: Reach out! We have the usual ambassador/bear building opportunities but we know there are more creative ways to spread Marlee’s love and message so I want to hear from people who are creative and energetic and ready to change the world! Like Marlee did!
