A former Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital patient collected more than 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 says. “Now they can get a sticker after they see the doctor.”
“We greatly appreciate this act of kindness and gratitude that Landon has bestowed to the patients here,” says Zareh Sarrafian, MBA, administrator of Children’s Hospital. “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 a day that gently reshaped his skull over the course of seven months, and he also underwent 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 LLU Children’s Hospital 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 multiple times by various users,” says Landon’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 is very proud of her son, and his teacher is too. Landon received a leadership award for service for the project.
