LAPD's Badges For Bandages Campaign Brings Smiles To Kids Battling Cancer
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — It's a simple concept, perhaps.
But in the eyes of a child battling cancer, being able to choose between a plain brown bandage and a colorful one can make all the difference.
Officer Andrew Chao of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose 5-year-old son lost his battle with an aggressive form of bone cancer, said it was on one of his many trips to the pharmacy when he thought, "Why not give him a choice and give him something other than those boring brown bandages?"
As Chao explains, his son was brave in his fight with cancer.
However, one of the only things Zach complained of, Chao says, was having to get injections after his chemotherapy sessions.
"I gave him a choice of choosing one of them and I realized there was a change in his attitude in regards to getting the shots," he said.
LAPD Officer Billy Brockaway, whose daughter has been diagnosed with a pediatric brain tumor, agrees that the choice of a fun bandage made all the difference.
Brockaway says Parker was just two and a half years old when she was diagnosed.
"She looked forward to one thing and that was a choice. A choice of picking a fun Band-Aid. And it meant so much to her," he said.
The LAPD has since established the Badges for Bandages campaign to raise colorful bandage donations for young cancer patients.
In the lobby of LAPD headquarters Thursday, boxes and boxes of colorful bandages were on display.
"And so, now you all wonder, how can you be involved," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said. "Pick up some character bandages for young people. Drop them off at your local police station."