Community Rallies Around CHP Officer's Family Hit Hard By Cancer
LA CRESCENTA (CBSLA.com) — Friends and co-workers of a California Highway Patrol officer whose wife has been hit hard by cancer are helping the family battle the costly disease.
Officer Rich Donoghue's wife, Sharon, is in remission from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
However, starting in 2008, it was one hit after another for the La Crescenta family.
"Both of my wife's parents passed away within 18 hours of each other," said Rich.
Then, when Sharon got pregnant with the couple's first child, doctors found a football-sized tumor in her abdomen on a routine ultrasound.
"It was devastating. We only had two months of pregnancy bliss before that hit us," said Sharon.
While she endured the chemotherapy and delivered a son named Matthew, the couple was told they couldn't have any more children.
Doctors turned out to be wrong.
Sharon learned she was pregnant again, but her cancer was back with a vengeance months after the newborn girl's birth.
"It flabbergasted me the first round… when I found out how much it costs to fight cancer. The second time around, it was three times as much," said Sharon.
Tamara Wallace of Pillars of the Highway Patrol Foundation, a group for spouses that is not affiliated with the CHP, decided to help the family by organizing a fundraiser and blood drive in connection with Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
"It continues to snowball for them. From the moment we heard about their plight, it was like, what could we do to help," she said.
The fundraiser is Oct. 14 from 12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at St. James The Less Church at 4625 Dunsmore Avenue in La Crescenta.
The event will have food trucks, raffles, music and live entertainment.
For more information about the Donoghue's, click here.
