Justin Wilford, a lecturer in UCLA’s geography department, speaks at the third annual Cranes for Cancer event on the Hill Thursday evening. Wilford’s son was diagnosed with a brain tumor in late August.
Ryan Eckert looked down at a sea of origami cranes piling on the table in front of him.
For the 30th time that evening, he picked up a delicately folded piece of paper and strung it on a massive mobile.
The fifth-year history student was among about 20 people who participated in the third annual Cranes for Cancer event held on the Hill Thursday night.
Students participating in the event made one mobile made up of 1,000 cranes. Student group Bruins Fighting Pediatric Cancer, the organizers of the event, will give the cranes to cancer patients at Mattel’s Childrens Hospital UCLA.
According to Japanese legend, presenting someone with 1,000 origami cranes will grant them one wish, said Eckert, president of Bruins Fighting Pediatric Cancer. With each mobile, the student group hopes to give a child one wish ““ good health, he said.
But the event is not just about granting wishes, Eckert said. The group wants children who are suffering from cancer to know that people love and care about them enough to fold the cranes.
“It is important that the kids know that people are out there cheering for them, not just their doctor and nurses,” said Satiro De Oliveria, a pediatric oncologist at Mattel.
Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of non-accidental death in children, De Oliveria said.
For Kate Vaught, a second-year sociology student, the event was personal. She was diagnosed with pediatric cancer when she was 12 and lost a leg to the disease.
Her seventh-grade class presented her with 1,000 cranes while she was in and out of treatment, which encouraged her to continue fighting, she said.
It took a few minutes for some students to get the hang of folding, but their hands were soon moving quickly.
The time it took to string together hundreds of cranes was only a small matter for Catherine Pourdavoud, a co-founder of the student group and a UCLA alumnus. She remembered giving a mobile to a teenage girl after the first Cranes for Cancer event, which took place in 2009.
“The glow in her eyes and seeing how grateful she was made it all worth it,” said Pourdavaud, who plans to become a pediatric oncologist.
The difficulties of fighting cancer is a reality for Justin Wilford, a UCLA geography lecturer who attended the event. His 5-year-old son Max was diagnosed with a brain tumor in late August and is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment.
“A lot of these families descend into feelings of despair or hopelessness or anger. … Bringing hope and positivity to their lives is a really special thing,” Wilford said.
This year’s Cranes for Cancer event focused on compiling origami creations left over from past years into mobiles.
During the first Cranes for Cancer event three years ago, students made cranes in a 48-hour folding competition between the different residential floors on the Hill. The result was 8,000 cranes for the club to string onto mobiles and give to patients, Eckert said.
An additional 1,000 cranes came from a group of students that made the cranes even without being asked.
“We made a promise that all of those cranes would go to patients, and we want to keep that promise,” Eckert said.
While the crane mobile made Thursday night will soon be taken to Mattel, another finished mobile made during last year’s event found a home with Wilford that evening. Wilford’s face lit up in surprise as Eckert presented him the mobile for his son Max.
“I love it ““ this is beautiful,” Wilford told students at the event. “The work that you are doing and what you are working toward really makes a difference.”