Heroic kids get "hero capes" at Kaiser Permanente hospital

“Capes4Heroes”, San Jose Sharks Team Up To Empower Children Facing Illness
Five -and--half year old Tyler DeCourcey is battling cancer but for one day this week at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center, he was a Superhero with cape and all.
Tyler and about two dozen other patients got superhero capes from “Capes4Heroes”, a non-profit dedicated to empowering children facing serious illnesses and other difficulties. Members of the San Jose Sharks hockey team presented the capes.
A hospital conference room at Kaiser Permanente was transformed into a cape “fitting room” and four seamstresses were standing by to customize each of the hand-made capes with the patient’s initial. “Capes4Heroes” founder Barbara Casados helped Tyler chose the “T” that was sewn onto his hand-made superhero cape.
Casados had a very personal reason for starting the group.
“Eight years ago, I found that my son behaved a lot better when I let him wear his superhero cape to pre-school,” said Casados, of Danville. “When that cape wore out, I made him another one to keep his spirits up.”
From that experience grew “Capes4Heroes,” which has distributed more than 15,000 superhero capes to hospitals and camps, places where kids are often struggling.
“The personalized superhero capes help the children showcase their strength and courage,” said Casados. “It’s amazing how something so simple can have a profound impact.”
Her organization partnered with the San Jose Sharks Foundation, the charitable arm of the hockey team. Three Sharks hockey players, on a 24-hour break between games, came by to help the patients get their capes.
Sharks players Paul Morton, Ben Smith, and Joel Ward were wearing their own “hero” capes as they helped the young ambulatory patients get their initials sewn on their chosen capes. Several of the patients, like Tyler, also wanted a Sharks badge sewn on the cape.
The Sharks players signed autographs on everyone’s cape. Tyler was the busiest autograph-seeker, getting his cape signed by the players, and the nurses, staff and doctors in the Kaiser Permanente hospital pediatrics unit.
“He just had his blood transfusion,” said his mother Sylvia DeCoursey, of Belmont. “So this is a great outing for him.”
For the kids who couldn’t come to the “fitting room,” the Sharks players went from room-to-room distributing more capes, and a little later in the day, the Shark’s giant mascot “Sharkie” also visited, playfully “chomping” kids on their heads with his soft mouth.
“This is really great dedication,” said Chris Boyd, Senior Vice President and Area Manager of the Santa Clara Medical Center. “The players and the mascot just had a game yesterday, and they’ll play again tomorrow, so this is a pretty busy ‘day off’ for them.”
(For more information about the capes, www.capes4heroes.org)