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The legacy of the late Tom Cook continues to help others The late Tom "Totsy" Cook, a 1975 Cal-Mum grad and Red Raider Football Hall of Fame member, loved helping people and he did a lot of it in his job as a recreation therapist for the disabled. Today, three years after losing his battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Tom’s spirit of helping others continues as his friends and family donated the proceeds from the Sixth Annual Tom Cook Memorial Golf Tournament toward the purchase of a seizure alert dog for a young Caledonia girl suffering from Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, a disease characterized by numerous benign tumors on the brain and other vital organs. The disease has left seven-year old Faith Chadderdon severely developmentally delayed and suffering from daily seizures. "The Cal-Mum community responded in a huge way to help Tom (during his illness) and now, his friends are doing what they know he would have wanted. Through his memory we are giving back to those in need in the Cal-Mum community," said a close friend Loree Harrington, who along with Melanie Parnell and Jim Crelly, organized the memorial golf tournament. Linda and Rusty Chadderdon, Faith’s parents, say despite their daughter undergoing a right frontal lobotomy in 2004 to remove two tumors, she continues to suffer from seizures, with the most severe episodes occurring at night or when she wakes up. Faith is autistic, is non-verbal with very little formally developed communication skills and has no safety awareness. Tests reveal that Faith functions at around the level of a two year old. She lives at home with her family who provide her constant loving care. "My greatest fear has been that she will have a seizure in the middle of the night and I won’t hear her," said Chadderdon, who admits she hasn’t had a restful night’s sleep in seven years. A tireless advocate for her daughter, Chadderdon searched the Internet for information on how she could help her daughter. She read that there are some trials in progress using trained dogs to detect seizure activity in humans. The theory is that the dog can detect the seizure before it occurs and can be trained to alert someone for help. Chadderdon searched for an agency that trained such a service dog and found out that there are agencies that do provide such dogs but that it can cost more than $12,000 and it is rare that such a dog would be placed with a developmentally delayed person. Then she located a website for Amazing Tails Service Dogs located in Oxford, PA. "I had emailed them an application but never heard back from them. Something in me said, try them again." Chadderdon contacted the agency again in April 2007 and within a short time a representative contacted her and said they would be willing to provide a trained dog and at a cost of about $5,000, much less than anticipated. They explained that there is no guarantee that the dog will be able to alert every seizure but said the dog would be trained to also improve Faith’s safety. The agency committed to begin training a dog and said they would place the dog in the Chadderdon home, regardless of whether the entire fee could be paid up front. "I broke down into tears at that point and all I could think was that for these trainers, it is passion over profit." The Chadderdon’s collected bottles and cans from their neighbors and friends and several work places also donated their empties to the cause. Family, friends and people who heard about Faith’s opportunity to have a service dog made financial contributions. A neighbor, Guy Marble, spearheaded a drive with his co-workers and union at Frontier and made a significant contribution toward the dog’s purchase. Sam, a large standard poodle, is now a member of the Chadderdon family. As Sam and Faith spend time together, the dog is exhibiting several alert responses to the onset of her seizures. For example, Sam may lie across Faith’s lap to still her prior to a seizure or he may intensely lick her and he continues to comfort her after the seizure has passed by staying close to her. Sam and Faith can be tethered so that she can walk independently in the park rather than be secured in a stroller for her own safety. Faith’s gait is much improved after just a few walks with Sam because she knows he is keeping her safe. "A lot depends on us learning his alerts, noting times and then coinciding events. It’s not like he can talk to us so we have to put the pieces together like a puzzle," Chadderdon explained. While Sam and Faith daily continue to form a very special bond, it is not the same as having a family pet and he cannot be treated as one. His focus must be on Faith and learning how to best bond with her. He will attend school with Faith at the Mary Cariola Center in Rochester where they are eagerly awaiting his arrival. Faith has surpassed the doctors’ prognosis but still requires full time care by her family and a nurse’s aide. Nevertheless Linda attempts to have a sit down dinnertime for her family where everyone can share the happenings of their day. She says her older daughter Kimberly deserves that much since her daily life is now anything but typical. Chadderdon said her family owes everything to the Cook family and friends for making this seizure alert dog possible for Faith. "Mary Ellen Cook (wife of the late Tom Cook) and their three daughters, Kelsey, Ashley and Arlie along with the committee of Loree Harrington, Melanie Parnell, Jim Crelly and Jim Sackeli opened their hearts to her family and took Faith’s struggles as personally as if she were theirs," she remarked. "Totsy continues to help others." Over 80 people participated in the event held June 16, 2008 at the Caledonia Country Club. After 18 holes of golf, they enjoyed a delicious dinner and many took home great door prizes donated for the raffle. Proceeds from this tournament and last year’s were donated to the Chadderdon family to help with the seizure dog purchase. Organizers want to thank the Weitzel family, owners of the Caledonia Country Club, for making this tournament possible every year. In and outside of his work, Cook’s family and friends say Tom could light up a room as soon as he walked in. He had a way of making people feel good just by being around him. So it wasn’t surprising when Tom was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord and eventually leads to death, that his friends came to the aid of his family to assist with caring for him. They also organized several fundraisers over his three-year battle with the disease to help defray the enormous cost of his care. Totsy, as those close to him called him, died in July of 2005 and since then, his friends have continued his work of helping others by holding memorial fundraisers and donating the proceeds wherever they are needed in the community, including the Tom Cook Scholarship that was established at Cal-Mum High School three years ago. A portion of the proceeds was also been presented to one of Cook’s former aides, who ironically, herself now is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Anyone wishing to make contributions to the scholarship may send the check to:
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