Las Vegas is perhaps best known as Sin City, and the desert metropolis has certainly earned that appellation, what with all the drinking, gambling and carousing that occurs there.
But for one week a year, during the Shriners Children’s Open, it becomes a different sort of place, full of feel-good stories and celebrations of young people with serious medical conditions whose lives have been changed and improved by the care that the organization provides.
Most of those accounts are related by the 23 patient ambassadors attending the annual PGA Tour event, which is scheduled to conclude on Sunday at TPC Summerlin. In addition to representing the 21 Shriners Children’s facilities around North America, they are serving as standard bearers during the competition over the weekend.
“This is our 17th year as the main sponsor, and we find that the Shriners Children’s Open acts as a terrific platform for talking about our patients and the care they receive at our hospitals,” said Mel Bower, who was once a Shriners Children’s patient himself and since 2018 has worked as the chief marketing and communications officer for Shriners International, a fraternal organization founded in 1872, as well as Shriners Children’s, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that started as a single hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1922. “It’s a really unique way to get in front of a very unique audience, both on-site and also on the Golf Channel, which is televising it.
“We do not have a facility in Las Vegas, but we have about 700 patients in the Las Vegas area who are being treated in out-patient facilities in Pasadena, California, or Salt Lake City.”
“Shriners Children’s was there for me when I needed them. Now it is time for me to be there for them.” – Gianna
For the 2023 event, Shriners Children’s added two international patient ambassadors for the first time. One is Gianna, a 15-year-old girl from Laguna Niguel in Southern California who has been treated at Shriners Children’s Southern California, and Juan Diego, a 19-year-old native of Honduras who has been receiving his care at Shriners Children’s Boston.
“It means a lot to me to be one of the first international patient ambassadors,” said Juan Diego, whose hands were so severely burned and disfigured in an electrical fire when he was 13 years old that he was completely dependent on others for such basic tasks as eating. “And I am also proud to be the first patient out of North America to represent our system.”
Gianna feels the same way. “Shriners Children’s was there for me when I needed them,” said the high school sophomore, whose left leg was amputated at her knee mere months after being born, due to a rare condition called proximal femoral focal deficiency. “Now it is time for me to be there for them.”
The Shriners Children’s Open is the latest iteration of a tournament that was first played in 1983 as the Panasonic Las Vegas Pro-Celebrity Classic, with two-time major championship winner Fuzzy Zoeller taking the winner’s share of what was then the richest event on the PGA Tour, with a total purse of $750,000. That number exceeded $1 million the following year, which explains in part why the tournament was able to attract such strong fields. Curtis Strange and Greg Norman were among those who took that title in the 1980s, with Davis Love III and Jim Furyk prevailing in the following decade. The championship was also the first one Tiger Woods ever captured on the PGA Tour when he beat Love in a playoff in 1996.
The event came to bear the Shriners name in 2008, and it has been part of the tournament ever since.
As the name of its charitable arm suggests, Shriners Children’s treats only children, and at no cost to them or their families. It also conducts and funds medical research and provides educational opportunities for physicians and other healthcare professionals.
“Our first hospital opened as a response to the polio epidemic,” said Bower, who is a member of the Ainad Shriners of East St. Louis, Illinois. “But as that disease was eradicated, we evolved into treating all pediatric orthopedic conditions, from the rare to the routine, as well as burn patients and later those who had suffered spinal injuries or needed cleft lip and palate surgeries.
“All 21 of our facilities are located in North America, and that includes one in Canada and another in Mexico City,” said Bower, who was diagnosed with a hip condition called Legg-Calve-Perthes disease when he was 18 months old and treated for several years after that at Shriners Hospitals for Children in St. Louis. “But we do outreach and have cared for kids from more than 170 countries in out-patient clinics.”
“I have spent a lot of time in the hospital at Boston talking to patients. Every case is different. Some are excited. Some are afraid. I try to help them by letting them know I have been there, too, and have some sense of what they are going through. I also let them know they are in very good hands.” – Juan Diego
As a one-time patient at a Shriners Children’s facility, Bower has a good story to tell. So does Juan Diego, and he says he likes sharing his experience with kids who are struggling with their own illnesses and conditions.
“I first traveled to Boston in 2018,” said the teenager, who was connected to Shriners Children’s through a foundation in Honduras, where he lives with his parents and three brothers. “At that point, I could not use my hands at all. But today, I am pretty independent. I can go to the bathroom by myself, I can eat, write and shower. There are maybe one or two things I need help with, but everything else I can do.”
One thing he does very well is mentor other patients, which is part of his role as an international patient ambassador.
“I have spent a lot of time in the hospital at Boston talking to patients,” Juan Diego said. “Every case is different. Some are excited. Some are afraid. I try to help them by letting them know I have been there, too, and have some sense of what they are going through. I also let them know they are in very good hands.”
Just as important, Juan Diego added, is what he learns from them. “They help me, too, as they tell me their stories,” he said.
Juan Diego is telling his story a lot as he interacts with other ambassadors during the golf tournament as well as with some of the players who are competing in the event. So is Gianna.
“For me in many ways, it is about leaving a legacy,” she said. “I want to be the person people look towards for encouragement and inspiration. I want to show kids like me that the limits are endless, and that they can do whatever they want. They just have to go and try.”
One thing that Gianna has been trying recently is golf, and she is developing an interest in the game.
“I like the social aspect,” she said. “I go out with my dad, who was so impressed with the care Shriners Children’s provided me that he became a Shriner himself. I am getting better at it and like how it gives me a way to spend time with my dad.”
“The golfers who are competing are pursuing excellence as they also deal with challenges. And our patient ambassadors are doing those same very things but in their own ways.” – Mel Bower
As for Juan Diego, he is just getting to know golf. “To prepare for Las Vegas, I went to Google and YouTube to learn how to play it,” he said. “I saw that the idea is to get a little ball into a hole with as few attempts as possible.”
Their experiences with the royal and ancient game are being enhanced dramatically with their presence this week at the Shriners Children’s Open and the special roles they are playing for an organization that is excited to highlight the good works it does.
“The golfers who are competing are pursuing excellence as they also deal with challenges,” Bower said. “And our patient ambassadors are doing those same very things but in their own ways.”
Clearly, there are lots of winners this week.