Posted in Board of Directors, Hat Drives, tagged daniela ruah, eric christian olsen, Hats Off For Cancer, los angeles, ncis, ncis: los angeles, ucla mattel children's hospital on May 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »
We had such a fun time today, handing out hats to the kids at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA with Daniela Ruah and Eric Christian Olsen from NCIS: Los Angeles, and our own Hats Off For Cancer founder, Tara Lawrence, and board member, Anna Shelton!
We are so thankful for you, our donors, allowing us to continually improve the lives of kids and teens battling cancer!
Posted in Board of Directors, Fundraiser on May 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Eric Christian Olsen Online is celebrating its 10 year anniversary this month! And we’re celebrating this incredible milestone with a contest. We will be raising money for Hats Off For Cancer, a charity that Eric supports. And if you make a donation, you will have the chance to win a great prize! I’ve contacted Eric about the contest and he has graciously agreed to send the winner a personalized autograph and a NCIS: Los Angeles DVD signed by the cast. No joke! Eric has supported the site for, well, almost 10 years actually!
Please read our guidelines below, make a donation and you could be the lucky winner of this amazing prize!1) Donate to Hats Off For Cancer via PayPal. You can use the button below. Minimum donation is $4 to enter (*for more info, scroll down). Please note that the money goes directly to Hats Off For Cancer.
There are two ways to confirm your donation so I know you’ve entered the contest:2A) Forward me the confirmation e-mail PayPal sent you after you’ve completed your donation. It looks something like the one below, only mine’s in Dutch.
I’ve covered up my last name in pink for this example. You can do something similar if you like. Forward it to: gwen@ericchristianolsen.net
2B) Or you can make a screenshot of your payment. Open your favorite Paint program, press PRTSC (or something similar) and then paste or press CTRL+V. Don’t forget to save your screenshot.
E-mail your screenshot to gwen@ericchristianolsen.net and please include your name and the amount you’ve donated. This is the only way for me to keep track of who entered the contest and how much money we’re raising. As I mentioned above, the money goes directly to Hats Off For Cancer, so I can’t see who donates and how much money someone donates.3) I will e-mail you back as soon as possible to confirm your contest entry.
4) The contest runs throughout May so make sure you’ve entered before Saturday, June 1st! That weekend, I will randomly draw a name from a hat and that person will be the winner. If you’re the winner, I’ll mail you to ask for your address so Eric can send you your prize!
That’s it! Thanks for reading and I hope you will participate! If you have any questions, please mail me or send me a tweet.
*I know that not everybody has a lot of money to spend. These are tough times so I really appreciate every donation we receive for Hats Off For Cancer. We won’t look at the donation amount when picking a winner, so everyone has a fair shot. The reason I do ask for a minimum donation of $4 is that hopefully, at the end of May, we’ve raised a couple of hundred dollars for a great charity. So if you can miss a couple of extra bucks and donate more than $4, well, that would be really great!
From the ECO Fansite: http://ericchristianolsen.net/10yearscontest.php
Posted in Awareness, Board of Directors, Fundraiser, tagged cbs, cbs celebrity cook-off, deeks, eric christian olsen, Hats Off For Cancer, marty deeks, ncis, ncis: los angeles, superbowl, Vote on January 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Our own board member, Eric Christian Olsen, who plays Marty Deeks on NCIS: Los Angeles, needs our votes for the CBS Celebrity Cook-Off competition to help win $5,000 for Hats Off For Cancer! Just go to this web site: http://www.cbs.com/superbowl/celebrity-cook-off/ and click on the Vote buttons next to Eric’s recipe. Share them on your facebook page and twitter. The more votes, the better!
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Posted in Board of Directors, tagged board of director, Cancer, Children, di barker, golf, hat drives, Hats Off For Cancer, Leukemia, tumor, Tyler Barker, umpqua, Volunteer on October 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
“Why are you involved with Hats Off For Cancer?”
Tyler Barker
I am proud to share why I support Hats Off For Cancer. My Mom was diagnosed with a tumor when I was only 9 months old and had a lot of her hair shaved off for her surgery. As a result, Hats Off is very close to my heart. I am honored to be able to help collect hats for the thousands of children who lose their hair during their cancer treatment and surgery. I am extremely grateful for my health and for being able to pursue my passion of golf.
I have also been a Double Red Cell and Platelet Donor for the past two years. Many patients who need platelets are undergoing chemotherapy or organ transplant and have weakened immune systems. A platelet dose from a single donor reduces the patient’s exposure to multiple donors and is therefore preferred by many physicians. A single platelet donation can provide enough platelets for a full therapeutic dose for a patient in need. In fact, some platelet donations yield enough platelets for two or three therapeutic doses. By contrast, it takes four to six whole blood donations to produce a single therapeutic dose. My monthly platelet donation takes a full 2 hours. Knowing I can affect someone’s life in a huge way, through platelet donations and through my work with Hats Off For Cancer, means a lot to me.
Through golf and the events I play in, I have made wonderful connections in the sporting industry and am happy to have received the support from companies like Adidas and Taylormade to name a few. I am looking forward to Mad Hatter Day 2011 and collecting over 1000 hats myself!
More about Tyler:
Tyler is the first and only Junior Board Member for the international nonprofit program, Hats Off For Cancer. He has participated and organized several hat drives and is responsible for spearheading the Portland area’s Hats Off For Cancer’s National Mad Hatter Day Event for two consecutive years now. His first effort found him as the national award winner for the most hats and monies donated. This is not an easy achievement as there were over 100 hat projects nationally entered in the Mad Hatter Day event. He was also featured on the Hats Off website as the national award winner with a photo and story about his very special event. His commitment continued and was so impressive to the HOC Board of Directors, that they invited him to hold the position of the very first Junior Board member to be named on this nonprofit board.
Tyler started playing golf in his freshman year of high school and his leadership and personable skills earned him the role of captain of the Varsity team in his Junior and Senior Year. After only 6 years of golf, he has since gone on to play on the International Junior Golf Tour. After qualifying for the IGJT Tournament of Champions in Florida in May of 2011, Tyler was selected to play for the IJGT Team USA against Scotland and Canada in St Andrews, Scotland, in the Euro Cup in July 2011.
Sharing the same birthplace as famous South African golfers such as Bobby Locke, Gary Player, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Louis Oosthuizen, Tyler hopes to emulate their success on the national playing field. Tyler continues to use his sport to connect with Nike, Adidas, Taylormade, Quicksilver as well as DC Shoes, to encourage them to donate hats to Hats off for Cancer.
Posted in Board of Directors, tagged actor, board of director, Cancer, childhood cancer, childhood cancer patients, Children, eric christian olsen, eric olsen, fired up, hat heroes, Hats Off For Cancer, Leukemia, ncis, ncis:la, pepperdine alumni, pepperdine university, Volunteer on August 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »
HOC is one of the few great charities where we can all have a direct and tangible effect on the lives of others. In the most simplistic yet profound way we can give the gift of hope in a journey that sometimes breaks us, but with the outcome, that afterwords, we are stronger in the broken places. I feel so lucky to be a part of this”
Actor Eric Christian Olsen donated his time to reach out to pediatric cancer patients in local Los Angeles hospitals.
Eric, known for his role on NCIS:LA as Marty Deeks and his starring role in the movie “Fired Up”, is also fondly remembered as Lloyd in “Dumb and Dumberer, When Harry Met Lloyd,” as well as many other well known movies.
When Eric learned about HOC he enthusiastically volunteered his time to visit pediatric cancer patients in the Los Angeles area. Along with bringing dvd’s and autographed photo’s for the patients to enjoy, Eric brought his quick smile, his unrestricted time, and his relaxed and easy way of connecting with the patients!
We are thrilled and honored to welcome Eric to our HOC family! To see what Eric is up to and where you can see him next on the big or small screen, check out his IMDB page online.
Posted in Board of Directors, tagged abundanceforlife, aneuploid, board of director, Cancer, Children, di barker, hat drives, Hats Off For Cancer, Leukemia, tumor, umpqua, Volunteer on August 1, 2011| 2 Comments »
“Why are you involved with Hats Off For Cancer?”
Di Barker
I am extremely proud to serve on the board for Hats Off For Cancer. My empathy with those who lose their hair through surgery or chemotherapy is very personal for me. In 1993, at the age of 33 and a mother of two beautiful children aged 9 months and 7 yrs, I was diagnosed with a Pleomorphic Adenoma. As a child I had suffered from severe headaches and as my Mother had suffered from Migraines, I was treated accordingly. It was not until I lost my hearing, in what seemed like a flash on an ordinary day, that the doctor’s investigated.
An MRI showcased a tumor the size of an orange encompassing my parotid gland on the right hand side of my head. It was dangerously close to my facial nerve and was pressing on the parasympathetic nerve at the base of my skull, which the cause of my loss of hearing. To say I was petrified was an understatement for sure! The doctors told me they had never seen a pleomorphic adenoma as big as mine was. They surmised it had been growing for at least 25 years! No wonder those headaches I endured all those years were so painful!
Though it is classified as a benign tumor, pleomorphic adenomas have the capacity to grow to large proportions and may undergo malignant transformation, to form carcinoma ex-pleomorphic adenoma, a risk that increases with time. Although my tumor was “benign” the tumor was aneuploid, which means it can recur after resection and it can invade normal adjacent tissue. Distant metastases have been reported after long (+10 years) time intervals.
Surgery was performed immediately to remove the tumor and I woke up to find my head had been shaved on the right side. I was grateful to have long hair at the time and was able to conceal the shaved area with a big comb over! As my facial nerve had been stretched in order to get the tumor out, I experienced facial paralysis for 5 months. Thankfully this was short lived and I continue to have my MRI checkups and am extremely grateful to say they have all been clear.
As a HOFC Board member, I am honored to partner with the “World’s Greatest Bank”, Umpqua Bank in Portland, Oregon. Umpqua Bank has committed to an ongoing relationship with Hats Off For Cancer using their locations at various retirement facilities in and around Oregon. The wonderful ladies in the knitting clubs at the retirement centers knit and crochet hats all year long. Umpqua Bank generously donates all the wool and baggies to package the hats in. Each year, on HOFC’s Mad Hatter Day, Umpqua Bank throws a big party at one of the retirement centers for the knitting club ladies and they do a hand over of all the hats the ladies have made. It is an event I look forward to each and every year. I am always humbled at the warmth and kindness in every stitch in each hat. The messages of hope and love for the children that the ladies include with the hats they have made, are lovingly appreciated by all the children who receive them.
We have received over 1,000 hats in the past 3 years along with donations of just over $1,200.00 from Umpqua Bank and their knitting club ladies!!
More about Di Barker:
Di Barker is the owner and Principal Designer of Abundanceforlife Living & Interiors and has been practicing Interior Design in Portland, OR since 2001. Di has created functional, elegant and amplified spaces for an amazing array of residential and corporate clients. She received an “Honorable Mention” by the Interior Design Society for the National Interior Designer of the Year Awards in 2011.
Before moving to the Northwest in 2000, Di enjoyed the fast pace of Toronto, Canada for two and half years. Born and raised in South Africa, Di enjoyed successful careers as a successful Managing Real Estate Broker, as well as in the glamorous world of fashion and design for 18 years.
On behalf of children battling cancer, we thank you, Di, for serving as a Board member and helping Hats Off For Cancer reach more than 1,000,000 children as they fight this disease. We’re so grateful for your involvement!
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Hats Off For Cancer 