Cancer education is Fontana boy's legacy

By Andrew Moyle, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

"We are thankful for us staying together and being able to help others," Ted Campos, 35, said. "We're thankful for a lot, but all of it we'd give up easily to have our son back. Bittersweet is the word that comes to mind."

Doctors diagnosed Eddie Villa Jr., Ted's stepson, with mesothelioma in October 1999.

After a two-month stay in the hospital and one and a half chemotherapy cycles, Ted and Isabel, Eddie's mother, were told there was nothing more to be done to combat the cancer which attacked Eddie's stomach lining.

"After a lot of soul searching and trying to decide, we brought him home," said Ted, a science teacher at Frisbie Middle School in Rialto.

Eddie returned to the Campos house in Fontana on a December evening, his mother said.

"When we got to the door he had closed his eyes and just felt comfortable being at home," Isabel said.

The next morning the family, including Eddie's biological father Eddie Sr., half-sisters Lauren, now 10, and Cathy, now 9, gathered around his bed.

"I was closest to his face," Ted said. "He let out a tear, and maybe a minute later he was gone. I just like to think he was seeing something much more beautiful."

The ordeal, so unexpected given Eddie's 11 years and apparent health, came as the absolute worst shock for a parent, Ted said.

"He was a healthy, normal kid, and in the span of two weeks, everything changed," Ted said. "He was a normal 11-year-old seventh-grader after girls. As a parent with no information and no knowledge of cancer, we had no idea. My character is, I gotta get as much information as possible."

That information-gathering led to a cause for the Campos family: becoming involved with the Candlelighter Foundation, a childhood cancer group educating the public about the reality of childhood cancer.

The family also started the Eddie C. Villa Memorial Blood and Marrow Drive. The third annual event took place Sept. 22 as a part of National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, bringing in 84 qualifying donors, Ted said.

The Campos family's knowledge came far too late for their son.

Eddie's problems started with a long period of stomach discomfort that the doctors mistakenly attributed to constipation, Isabel said.

"I noticed he wasn't the active, hyper child he always had been," Eddie Villa, Sr. said.

The HMO system failed the Campos family, and the mission now is to make sure parents take responsibility for their children's health, Ted said.

"If any time (symptoms) comes about, take your child in and get checked," Ted said.

Those symptoms include listlessness, unusual swelling and prolonged pain, Ted said.

The Campos family's educational efforts aren't the only way they keep Eddie's memory alive. His room has remained fundamentally untouched for three years.

"When he passed I told him his room would never come down, that everything would stay the way it is," Isabel, a mural artist, said. "It's a place now where we go to be close to him."

The room is decorated as a near-shrine to military aviation. Eddie desperately wanted to be a fighter pilot, Isabel said.

"Everything in here is the way he wanted," she said. "Eddie was the type when the weekends came, you saw him in whole army outfits, boots and all."

Several Marine aviators from the training unit in Mira Mar came to visit Eddie in the hospital.

"It was the first time we'd seen him smile for a long time," Isabel said. "They promised when he got better they'd take him on a jet. He never got the chance."

Eddie's desire to fly is reflected in the angel pins his parents wear, signifying a child who's died from cancer, Isabel said.

"We wear his pins every day to honor his memory," she said. "People stop us and ask about the pins and it's an opportunity to educate them."

Education is the Campos family's mission now.

"I always start out and tell (people who ask about the pins), thank you for asking me," Ted said. "The goal is to inform people, inform parents. You are the primary caretaker of your children."

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