Concern for families of sick keiki gave Lagareta a cause and career

When neighbor island and Pacific Basin parents are faced with a medical emergency involving a child with a life-threatening illness, the child and one parent must often fly to Honolulu for the appropriate care, leaving the remaining parent at home with the other children. The parent and child who come to Oahu are often all alone.

This was what a 26-year old Kitty Lagareta witnessed when her younger son, Kalin, was 11 months old in 1980. He was hospitalized for several weeks with spinal meningitis at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children.

“I noticed another mom wearing shorts and a T-shirt whose son was next to mine in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit),” recalled Lagareta. “She was in the same clothes every day and I never saw her eat. She was a Big Island single mom who had been flown to Oahu with her very sick child and she had only $5 in her purse, the clothes on her back and nobody to call.

“She was surviving on free coffee and a few snacks from the hospital vending machine. I invited her to come up to my place near the hospital to shower and get a bite to eat.”

Lagareta came across several other parents in this same situation. Unable to afford a lengthy hotel stay, some lived out of a rented car in the hospital parking garage.

“It was shocking to me. Living in a car was the only way they could manage to be near their critically ill child for weeks at a time,” she said.

Lagareta took her concerns to hospital President Richard “Dick” Davi. A year later, Davi was approached by a woman named Susan Entz and McDonald’s Restaurants of Hawaii about starting a Ronald McDonald House in Hawaii. In addition to wanting the hospital’s support for the project, they were looking for parents of children who had been hospitalized with a critical illness to serve on the founding board. Davi immediately thought of Lagareta and suggested her.

Entz, a special education teacher on Hawaii island, was the driving force behind the creation of Hawaii’s first Ronald McDonald House. “Several of her students had been flown to Oahu for medical treatment,” Lagareta said, “and she was aware of how difficult it was for their parents.”

In addition, Entz and her husband, John, owned a Big Island McDonald’s restaurant, so she knew about Ronald McDonald Houses.

The idea of a “home away from home” for families of hospitalized children was born when Fred Hill, a tight end with the Philadelphia Eagles pro football team, learned in 1971 that his 3-year-old daughter had leukemia. The team rallied around him, and the first Ronald McDonald House was opened in Philadelphia in 1974.

The first task for the Honolulu supporters was to find a house within 2 miles of Kapiolani and Shriners Hospitals for Children that could serve 13 to 15 families. There aren’t many such homes, and it took more than two years of searching in Manoa to find one.

“We put an offer in for $850,000 for a home in the Judd Hillside area, even though we only had $25,000 in seed money from McDonald’s,” Lagareta recalled. “We couldn’t really fundraise until we had the house. Then it was an additional two years before we could get a conditional use permit to use the house for our purpose. Talk about a journey!”

Lagareta was asked to be the first and only staff person for the project. She was the day-to-day coordinator and spokeswoman for the organization, and Entz was the leader and driving force.

“Kitty was a young housewife who had never done fundraising before and suddenly she had the enormous task of going out into the community and asking for $2-1/2 million,” said Jerri Chong, president and executive director of Ronald McDonald House.

Lagareta cited Entz as an inspiration. “She was the first person I ever met who let nothing stop her. ‘If you can’t get in the door, you go in the window,’ she said. ‘If you can’t get in the window, you dig up through the floorboards, but you get the job done.’”

She also gave credit to the late Maurice “Sully” Sullivan, fundraising chairman for the project.

“Getting involved in helping start Hawaii’s Ronald McDonald House while I was still in my 20s taught me things that have been invaluable ever since.” Lagareta said. “If you set your mind to something, there’s always a way to get it done. Working with others allows you to achieve much bigger things than you could possibly do as an individual.”

Many local companies have stepped forward to support Hawaii’s Ronald McDonald House. By donating more than 20,000 room nights when the facility was full, Outrigger Hotels has made it possible for the agency to never turn away a family since opening in 1987.

The nonprofit organization Ronald McDonald House Charities of Hawaii was created in 1997 to expand its reach.

Honolulu now has two residential facilities in Manoa that are open 365 days a year. Each family is assigned to a private room and Ronald McDonald House provides transportation to and from hospitals, a fully stocked pantry, a communal kitchen, laundry facilities and a children’s play room.

There’s also a Ronald McDonald House Family Room at Kapiolani Medical Center to provide on-site respite and support.

The volunteer work that Lagareta did for Ronald McDonald House led to her being offered a job at Communications Pacific, which had been hired to help with public relations while the Manoa facility was under development.

CommPac’s then co-owner, Rick Zwern, hired Lagareta in 1986 as an assistant account executive and within three years she was promoted to vice president. In 1998, she bought the company. Today CommPac is one of Hawaii’s leading communications firm.

It’s a good example to us all. Volunteering is not a one-way street. You get as much as you give.

Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep” series of books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him via email at sigall@yahoo.com.