Students show heart

Newport Beach resident Isabel Morris, 9, still has the battered, pink stuffed pig she received as a sick infant at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

In her first baby pictures, little Isabel has a breathing tube inserted into her throat. She is covered in wires and monitors in a plastic hospital basinet.

Although Isabel is an energetic third-grader now who loves to swim and read books, she had three open-heart surgeries before the age of 3.

Isabel was born with truncus arteriosus, a congenital heart disease that left her with a deformed pulmonary artery.

Now she and her classmates from Sharon Barth’s third-grade class at Newport Elementary are collecting socks and baby blankets for infant heart patients at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where Isabel underwent all of her surgeries.

“Being in the hospital, everything is so dreary and drab,” said Isabel’s mother, Jill Morris. “Anything like a bright-colored blanket or warm socks brightens up the day.”

Isabel first wrote about the idea of collecting blankets and socks for sick children in an essay she wrote for school. Before long, the whole class wanted to help out.

“I just want them [children at the hospital] to not feel like they are trapped and that they are at home,” Isabel said.

The Costa Mesa home and accessory boutique Pink and Olive, owned by local moms Julie Rutter and Rorie Kaplan, donated 12 blankets after Isabel told them her story.

Barth’s class will continue collecting blankets and socks until Feb. 12, when Isabel will personally deliver the items to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Isabel’s teacher hopes her students will learn about the importance of community service from the project.

“They learn about people helping others, responsibility and what being trustworthy and a good friend mean,” Barth said. “I think it teaches them to think about others, and that not everyone is as fortunate as they are.”

Isabel had to be airlifted from Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian Hospital to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles when she was only eight hours old.

She was just six days old when she underwent the first of three open heart surgeries at Childrens Hospital.

“I actually think it’s kind of cool,” Isabel said looking at her old baby pictures from the hospital on a recent afternoon at her Lido Isle home. She hopes to become a doctor one day.

Doctors have told Morris that her daughter will have to undergo one more open heart surgery as a young adult to permanently fix her heart defect once she stops growing.

“I think her experience has made her a very nurturing person, and that’s why she would do something like this,” Morris said.

How To Help

Donations of infant blankets and socks for heart patients at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles can be dropped off for Sharon Barth’s third-grade class at Newport Elementary School, 1327 W. Balboa Blvd. any time between now and Feb. 12.