The Lafleur family’s support for Rady Children’s spans three generations
Volunteers are the unsung heroes of Rady Children’s. They work throughout the Hospital and its satellite locations, doing administrative tasks, assisting staff and working directly with patients and families.
For many volunteers, Rady Children’s becomes a home away from home, and giving back becomes something they can share with their family and friends. For the Lafleur family, support for the Hospital is something that’s been passed down through generations.
Tom Lafleur Sr. started the volunteering tradition in 1987 as a way to say thanks for the care his daughter, Paulette, received during a bout of polio. Over the next 18 years, he dedicated more than 10,000 hours to the Hospital, becoming a familiar and beloved presence. Tom loved the kids, the families and the staff.
A couple years after Tom started volunteering, both his daughter Colette and daughter-in-law Mona began working for Rady Children’s, Colette as a pharmacist and Mona as a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), then the emergency department. After retiring in 2018, Mona just couldn’t leave the Hospital behind.
She returned to volunteer in Rady Children’s vaccine clinic in the early days of the pandemic.
“Families really feel the consistency and the compassion that the staff has, and the mission of the hospital is carried out on a daily basis,” she says. “Compassion drove me to want to stay, and, over the years, I feel like the Hospital has evolved with the times and accommodated the families’ needs. I honestly never once felt like I wanted to go work somewhere else.”
Recently, Mona’s son and Tom Sr.’s grandson, Jacob, began volunteering in the hematology/oncology activity room. He gets to play games, watch movies and do arts and crafts with the kids from the unit who are well enough to socialize, and makes bedside visits (in full PPE) to those who aren’t.
“I was always around the hospital when I was a kid—my dad would take me and my sister to visit my mom or bring her lunch in the emergency department—so it was a place I was familiar and comfortable with.”
“I was always around the hospital when I was a kid—my dad would take me and my sister to visit my mom or bring her lunch in the emergency department—so it was a place I was familiar and comfortable with,” says Jacob. “At the end of 2023, I found myself with spare time and spare love and compassion to give back to the community. The timing worked out that Rady Children’s was in their open application period for volunteers—it was the first place I thought of.”