Former Patient Collects 33,000 Stickers for Kids at LLUCH

A former Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital (LLUCH) patient collected over 33,000 stickers for current patients at the hospital as part of a class service project. Six-year-old Landon Harper delivered the stickers he received from friends, family, classmates and even strangers to the hospital on June 18. Landon brought stickers of every shape, size, color and character to make kids at the hospital feel better. “Kids are afraid of what doctors are going to do or if they are going to get a shot,” Landon said. “Now they can get a sticker after they see the doctor.” “We greatly appreciate this act of kindness and gratitude that Landon has bestowed on the patients here,” said LLUCH administrator Zareh Sarrafian. “Knowing firsthand what it’s like to be a patient here himself, he knows that something as simple as a sticker can make a patient’s day just a little bit better. He is a great example to his peers.” As an infant, Landon was diagnosed with Plagiocephaly: a skull deformation. He had to wear a custom helmet 23 hours per day that gently reshaped his skull over the course of seven months and go through physical therapy to strengthen his neck muscles. “My head was getting huger and huger,” Landon recalls from stories his parents told him. “I had to wear a helmet for the rest of my baby life!” Now the energetic first-grader is giving back to the hospital that helped him. Every year, Inland Leaders Charter School in Yucaipa challenges students to an individual service project. Landon decided he wanted to do a project that gave back to the kids at LLUCH and, with the help of his mom, came up with the idea of collecting stickers to brighten the days of patients at the hospital that treated him. He called his service project “Landon’s Stickers for Kids.” “In addition to just asking close friends and family, we also put it on Facebook, and it was shared many times by various users,” said London’s mom, Tierra. “We collected stickers for two weeks, and we were getting stickers from people we didn’t even know.” Landon admits he “checked the mail every day and ripped the mail open to get the stickers.” His mom was very proud of her son, and his teacher was too. Landon received a leadership award for service for the project.