In the wake of his son’s death, Richard Nares started an organization to help low-income families get their children to chemotherapy.
In 2000, Richard Nares lost his son, Emilio, to leukemia. Knowing the grief and stress that parents face when their children have cancer, he set out to help in a seemingly small way. The Emilio Nares Foundation (ENF) was started simply to drive kids with cancer to their chemo and doctor appointments, but over the years it has become more than just a car service.
The San Diego-based organization also has an information center with laptops and a staff to help families find resources to help them cope. There are also weekly support programs, and they now make snack deliveries to hospital rooms to cheer families up.
“It’s a real calling just to know that you can help, and see these families get to their appointments,” Nares said. He spends almost every day at the hospital helping out these children, with the exception of this month: Nares is running 700 miles from San Francisco to San Diego to raise funds for the organization.
Currently the program is funded by private grants and donations to help them drive, in Nares’ esitmation, more than 40,000 miles each year in carpools. ENF has families that have relied on them for years, and Silvia Johnson, a single mother whose 2-year-old daughter has neuroblastoma, receives eight to ten rides in any given week—and it doesn’t cost the family anything.
“I don’t know what I would do without them,” Johnson said in an interview with CNN.
For Nare, it is hard to see children with cancer every day and be reminded of his son. “Sometimes I relive the stress I see on their faces,” he said. But it is a pain that he willingly endures so that dozens of others may be just a tiny bit less stressed in terms of time and finances. He knows the situation they are in, and his organization is there to help them through it.
“We do it because we have compassion for these families.”
Video: CNN/Emilio Nares Foundation
