When members of the Traverse City St. Francis High School Key Club set out to make a donation to the new pediatric cancer clinic at Munson Medical Center, they hoped they would be able to raise $4,000. They could not have been happier, when on Friday, they presented a check for $14,000 to Robert Wick, interim president of the Munson Foundation, in memory of their classmate and friend, Katie Heintz, who died of cancer last August.
"Katie was a very special person and her attitude towards life made this outpouring of support for sick children possible," said Garrett Cogin, Key Club president, at the presentation ceremony.
Cogin thanked the Heintz family for their support of the club's chief fund-raising event, the First Annual Katie Heintz Memorial Basketball Tournament. The success of the tournament spurred the athletic department to donate the gate earnings from a St. Francis boy's basketball game to the cause as well as several local businesses to pledge donations for each point scored during the final game of the tournament.
"It is really quite an achievement, quite remarkable what they have done," said Wick who accepted the check on behalf of the clinic that treated its' first patients this month. The Pediatric Cancer Clinic, in partnership with DeVos Children's Hospital of Grand Rapids, served nine patients from Traverse City, Petoskey, Manistee and Grayling on their first day of operation, March 10.
"The community seems to be quite ready for it and the need is dramatic. Keeping children in northern Michigan for their treatment is the goal and we are well on our way," Wick said.
Pat Heintz, Katie's dad, is well aware of the need for local treatment of children with cancer.
"This is a very special beginning," said Heintz, whose daughter was treated at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor.
"Someone is up in heaven kicking me every day, saying 'Dad, we're not done yet'," Heintz said.