Kendra Livingstone, 15, Garden Grove, Calif.
When Kendra Livingstone was a little girl, her best friend in the world was her father, Rick. An electrical technician and avid surfer, he raised her by himself after splitting with her mother when Kendra was 3. He called her Doodah and they were inseparable. "He was always teaching me things—why the sky was blue, how to throw a Frisbee," Kendra recalls. "When we drove, he'd play the music real loud and drum the beat on my leg."
She wasn't quite 7 when her world came crashing down: Rick was diagnosed with a cancer of the endocrine system. "I was like, That's bull," Kendra says. "My dad's been thrown off a motorcycle with no shoes, shirt or helmet. He's been hit in the face with his surfboard. He's Superman."
For a while it seemed that way. Given a year to live, Rick battled on for four. But the disease and the chemo ravaged him. He was gelling his hair one day when Kendra saw clumps fall from his scalp. "That's when it hit me," she says. On April 18, 2003, Kendra woke with a start when her father collapsed in the hallway. As she helped him to bed he said, "I love you, Doodah." "I love you too," she replied. They never spoke again. Three hours later, Rick died at 36. For Kendra, 11 at the time, it took days for reality to kick in. "I was looking at the door, waiting for him to come in," she says. "Then I had a breakdown. I cried for hours."
For weeks, Kendra went into a tailspin. Now in the care of Rick's mother, Jeri, she felt lost: Her grades plunged; she grew distant from friends. "It was hard to have people say, 'I know how you feel. My goldfish just died.'" Then, in May 2003, a storeowner told Jeri about Kids Konnected, a group that links children of cancer patients with kids who have been through it before. Started in 1993 by Jon Wagner-Holtz, then 11, whose mother survived breast cancer, the nonprofit now has 150 volunteers in seven states and has helped thousands of kids (www.kidskonnected.org). Teen members can do three days' training and then, with professional therapists, lead support groups and help direct activities at summer camps. Attending a group led by a girl who also lost her father to cancer, Kendra gradually rebounded, bringing her grades back up and volunteering to be a group leader.
Since last March, Kendra has listened to heart-wrenching tales of illness and loss in her twice-monthly group of about 12 girls and boys ages 5 to 12. Also serving as a summer camp counselor, she has formed a close bond with several kids—but none more so than 7-year-old Daisy Thornton. A second grader from Anaheim, Daisy loves Barbies, writing stories and giving presents. She also loves her mother, Susan Stanger, a 50-year-old former concession-stand worker diagnosed in 2003 with hepatitis C and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Since then, Stanger has been hospitalized for up to five weeks at a time. Her liver is failing, but because of the cancer, she's ineligible for a transplant and says she's on borrowed time. Weakened, Stanger struggles to keep up the two-bedroom apartment where she and Daisy live with Daisy's father, Lester, 58, and his adult son. She can't push her daughter on the swing. It's taken a toll on Daisy, who started sleeping in her mom's bed when she fell ill, would snap when people tried to talk to her and, last fall, walked into class, dropped her backpack and cried, "My mom is dying."
A turning point for Daisy came last October, when Stanger, who saw an ad on TV, took her daughter to a group led by Kendra. The two liked each other instantly. "It was like a magnet," says Stanger. The pair quickly discovered a mutual love of double-Dutch jump rope, pizza and cheerleading. Before long Kendra was a regular at Daisy's practices, watching intently from her folding chair and gently offering tips on jumps and splits.
Their bond has deepened. For Valentine's Day, Daisy gave Kendra a pink-and-white unicorn and a card that said, "I love you." And for Daisy's eighth birthday, May 1, Kendra will take her friend to Disneyland, paying for the outing with $60 she has saved from her allowance. Slowly, Kendra has helped bring Daisy out of her shell. Stanger was driving the girls home from Daisy's practice when she heard this conversation from the back of the car: "Daisy asked Kendra, 'How did your dad die? Did you cry? Was he in a lot of pain?'" Stanger recalls thinking, "Oh, this is working."
For Kendra as well. "I love Daisy so much," she says. "The way she has opened up to me makes me feel really good." For Daisy, the road ahead isn't easy. "She still has her moments," Stanger says. "She told me the other day she dreamed I died, and she and her dad had to live in a cardboard box. But I think she understands a little more that she can survive." As for Daisy, she's taking one day at a time—easier to do now that she's not alone. "Before I met Kendra I was shaking in my shoes," she says. "Not anymore. I don't have to keep my feelings bundled in."
SHE GIVES GIRLS THE POWER TO STAND UP—AND FIGHT BACK
Dallas Jessup, 15, Vancouver, Wash.
MOMENT OF TRUTH: In February 2004, Dallas saw a TV news clip of a security video in which 11-year-old Carlie Brucia of Sarasota, Fla., was led away from a car wash by Joseph P. Smith, who was later convicted of her rape and murder. "It was so chilling," Dallas recalls. "I thought, 'This could happen to my best friend.'" So Dallas, who holds a black belt in tae kwon do and is certified in Filipino street fighting, recruited friend Catherine Wehage, 16, as well as a self-defense instructor and a video director to make a movie showing girls "how to put up a fight."
BIG RESULTS: Since it debuted online last October at justyellfire.com, Just Yell Fire—named for the phrase Dallas suggests victims should shout to draw a crowd—has been downloaded over 100,000 times and viewed in 34 countries. In it, Dallas demonstrates self-defense moves like eye-gouging, ear-pulling and groin-slapping—all vetted by a martial arts pro and designed to enable a woman to escape from a much larger attacker. (And thanks to a lucky Hollywood connection—Catherine's cousin works on the set of Lost—Evangeline Lilly and Josh Holloway make cameos.) Dallas's message has struck a chord with girls like Courtney Connell, 18, who wishes she had known how to defend herself when an ex-boyfriend attacked her several years ago. "I was panicked, hyperventilating," recalls Connell. "I'd never thought something like this would happen to me."
SHE GETS KIDS DANCING—AND HEALTHY TOO
Dominique Vargas, 13, Holland, Mich.
How to combat the twin risks of obesity and boredom when you're a kid with no money and nowhere to go? Get up and dance, says Dominique, whose All For One program has offered free classes to about 50 kids in styles ranging from Mexican Folkloric to hip-hop since 2005. The spunky eighth grader, who has danced since age 3, started the group after she had to stop taking lessons because money was tight, and told her mother she wouldn't charge "because I don't want any kid to feel how I felt." The classes, which Dominique and three volunteer instructors teach at the local arts council, have already made a difference for Lenora Mendoza, 10, who dropped from a size 14 to a 12 since she began taking classes in February. "I'm all sweaty when I'm done, and I know it's making me more healthy," Mendoza says. "Dancing makes me feel good."
SHE SHARES HER PAINFUL PAST TO GIVE FOSTER KIDS A REASON TO HOPE
Heather Wilder, 13, Las Vegas
As a toddler, Heather had no friends, slept on the floor with a pillow and blanket and got one bowl of ramen noodles a day. If she opened her door, an alarm would sound, bringing on a beating from her drug-using mother and her friends. "The only time I got to leave my room," she said, "was when someone felt like hurting me."
Heather recounts those terrifying memories, as well as four years in foster homes, in a series of 10 booklets aimed at helping other foster kids "know they're not alone." (Heather has cowritten some of the booklets with her adoptive cousin Raven Asay, 12, also a former foster child.) The booklets, which the Clark County Department of Family Services in Las Vegas has helped distribute to 1,500 foster kids, deal with everything from how to behave in court to what to say to a new foster parent. "These children have been through trauma," says Anne-Marie Abruscato, a clinical coordinator at a mental health care facility. "To have this information in a child's words is remarkable." Indeed, Abruscato says, one of Heather's booklets—in which she writes of a recurring dream of being attacked by a shark—helped a boy with fetal alcohol syndrome open up about the pain his mother caused him.
It was to make sense of her own chaotic beginnings that Heather started writing in 2004, shortly before being formally adopted by fifth-grade teacher Tammy Wilder, who in 2001 took Heather in. These days, Heather sleeps on a twin bed with a white frilly bedspread, listens to Jesse McCartney on her iPod and plays with her hamster Flip—a happy ending she wishes for other foster children. "Look at me now," she says. "I'm so lucky."
Know a hero? Send suggestions to HEROESAMONGUS@PEOPLEMAG.COM
- Contributors:
- Sandra Marquez/Anaheim,
- Alicia Dennis/Las Vegas and Vancouver,
- Amy Mindell/Holland.
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