![Elena Sweet in a wheelchair, by a large poster of her as a patient ambassador]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1727481149/alamedak12caus/uzoi0fzwiisrhpkyrrgt/ElenaSweet.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1727481149/alamedak12caus/uzoi0fzwiisrhpkyrrgt/ElenaSweet.jpg","width":323}])
Congratulations to former Otis Owl and current Lincoln Lion Elena Sweet, who received a 2024 Colin Powell Medal of Courage Award last week. The UC Benioff Hospitals gives this award to people who demonstrate courage and compassion.
Elena received the award for the resilience and creativity she exhibited during her ten months of intensive treatment for Ewing Sarcoma, a very rare form of bone cancer. While undergoing chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and physical therapy, for instance, Elena designed dream apartments for members of her nursing team, and organized a talent show, games of sharks and minnows, and a henna business to serve other patients - all at UC Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, where she was being treated.
“She wasn’t just helping herself cope,” Hania Thomas-Adams, MA, CCLS, a Child Life Specialist at the hospital, says in a video about Elena produced by UC Benioff Hospitals. “She was thinking about everyone else.”
After a year in a wheelchair, the twelve-year-old has begun advocating for more inclusion for people with disabilities. She also serves as a Patient Ambassador for the hospital, sharing her story at events across the Bay Area to help raise awareness of the institution’s good work. “I really like it because it lets me tell my story in a way that gives back to other people,” she says in the video.
Her career goal is to become a social worker, because she wants to help others.
Elena received her medal at last week’s Dreamfest Concert for Kids, a major fundraiser for the UC Benioff Hospitals that this year featured both P!nk and Imagine Dragons.
“My treatment was really rigorous: I had 14 chemo cycles, radiation, eight surgeries — one 15 hours long to save my leg — and spent 115 nights in the hospital,” Elena says. “It’s amazing to receive this honor. My hope is to help raise funds for hospital therapy programs, which helped me so much: music, child life specialists, and pet therapy. Ahbi, a golden retriever, cuddled next to me on my hospital bed!”
The Sweets specifically mentioned the “heroics” of Gabby LoParo, Elena’s 5th grade teacher at Otis who continued to teach Elena during her treatments.
“It was always really important for Elena to continue her education,” LoParo says in the video. “Whether she was sitting in a hospital bed or working with her Owl teacher, she still wanted all the work and that love for learning that she had inside of her never went away.”
Read more about Elena (and watch the video!)
Elena received the award for the resilience and creativity she exhibited during her ten months of intensive treatment for Ewing Sarcoma, a very rare form of bone cancer. While undergoing chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and physical therapy, for instance, Elena designed dream apartments for members of her nursing team, and organized a talent show, games of sharks and minnows, and a henna business to serve other patients - all at UC Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, where she was being treated.
“She wasn’t just helping herself cope,” Hania Thomas-Adams, MA, CCLS, a Child Life Specialist at the hospital, says in a video about Elena produced by UC Benioff Hospitals. “She was thinking about everyone else.”
After a year in a wheelchair, the twelve-year-old has begun advocating for more inclusion for people with disabilities. She also serves as a Patient Ambassador for the hospital, sharing her story at events across the Bay Area to help raise awareness of the institution’s good work. “I really like it because it lets me tell my story in a way that gives back to other people,” she says in the video.
Her career goal is to become a social worker, because she wants to help others.
Elena received her medal at last week’s Dreamfest Concert for Kids, a major fundraiser for the UC Benioff Hospitals that this year featured both P!nk and Imagine Dragons.
“My treatment was really rigorous: I had 14 chemo cycles, radiation, eight surgeries — one 15 hours long to save my leg — and spent 115 nights in the hospital,” Elena says. “It’s amazing to receive this honor. My hope is to help raise funds for hospital therapy programs, which helped me so much: music, child life specialists, and pet therapy. Ahbi, a golden retriever, cuddled next to me on my hospital bed!”
The Sweets specifically mentioned the “heroics” of Gabby LoParo, Elena’s 5th grade teacher at Otis who continued to teach Elena during her treatments.
“It was always really important for Elena to continue her education,” LoParo says in the video. “Whether she was sitting in a hospital bed or working with her Owl teacher, she still wanted all the work and that love for learning that she had inside of her never went away.”
Read more about Elena (and watch the video!)
Photo Credit: UC Benioff Hospitals