Gecko Craft Store at Garfield School raises money for schoolmate with cancer

By Jennifer Nitson

Gazette-Times reporter

Business was brisk Friday morning at the Gecko Craft Store at Garfield Elementary School.

At the makeshift store set up in the school’s entryway, children swarmed tables laden with cards, key chains, origami cranes and other crafts, holding up crumpled dollar bills to pay for their selections. Parents stood by with checkbooks and money in hand, modeling patience as they waited their turns to check out the merchandise.

Not only were people getting the best deals in town on hand-painted Valentines, woven plastic “boondoggle” keychains and one-of-a-kind placemats, they were helping raise money for a young Garfield student suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Eight-year-old Cricket Beebe was diagnosed in December of 2006 with the high-risk cancer that causes tumors on her brain. She was pulled out of school and has since been subjected to radiation and chemotherapy treatments that have left her bedridden and unable to eat without a tube.

Garfield students have spent the past few weeks crafting for the Gecko Craft Store, keeping Cricket in mind as they industriously painted, weaved and beaded.

“I think it’s pretty nice because we’re helping her out,” said Milla Uriarte, a third-grader who was in Cricket’s class last year. “She’s pretty sick and it’s pretty nice to donate money for her. I think a lot of people will be coming to the store because there is a lot of stuff we worked really hard on.”

When her classmates and teachers from Garfield think about Cricket, a fashionable young girl in pink go-go boots comes to mind.

“She was always dressed so cute,” said Shirley Irwin, a teacher at Garfield who helped organize the fundraiser. “You’d ask her how she was doing, and she would say ‘I’m good, if I can just get rid of this headache.’”

After Cricket was diagnosed, her mother, Jennifer Kearney, who is raising Cricket by herself, had to quit her waitressing job at Tommy’s Fourth Street Bar and Grill in order to care for Cricket and take her to treatments at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland.

Fundraisers — coin drives and dinners — have been held at Garfield School and at Tommy’s to help Kearney as she struggles to pay bills. This effort was set back in October when a former friend of Kearney’s was accused of stealing money from the Cricket Beebe Medical Expense Fund at OSU Federal Credit Union.

The exact amount has not been determined, but Christina Lee Simpson, 40, has been charged with felony theft for stealing between $1,000 and $5,000 that had been collected in fundraisers and cash jars around town.

The case is pending in Benton County Circuit Court. Simpson, formerly the only person named on the credit union account, no longer has access to the fund, said an OSU Federal Credit Union account-services representative.

Fundraisers have continued, sometimes very informally. Just before Christmas, for example, school district faculty and staff responded to an e-mail and donated enough money so that Cricket and her mother could stay at a motel in Portland the night before a treatment rather than get up at 4:30 a.m. to make the drive.

Children at Garfield bring their pennies and nickels to school for the Cricket coin drive and Irwin is hoping to secure a business sponsor to participate in a national program — the Sparrow Club — that allows children to perform community services while businesses reward their efforts with donations to critically ill children and their families. Interested businesses can call 503-724-1772 or see www.sparrowclubs.org to learn about sponsorship.

“When she (Kearney) knows she can pay bills and she can just concentrate on Cricket, it helps a lot,” Irwin said.

Cricket and her mother were unable to come to Friday’s fundraiser. After months of radiation treatments that have made her sicker and sicker, a brain scan showed this week that a tumor on her brain is still growing.

“It has been a very hard week for them,” Irwin said. “They’re in an even more desperate situation now.”

If you go

WHAT: Gecko Craft Store fundraiser for Cricket Beebe

WHERE: Garfield Elementary School, 1205 N.W. Garfield Ave.

WHEN: Monday and Tuesday, from 7:45 to 8:15 a.m. and 2:35 to 3 p.m. both days