Owen's Boundless Gratitude

Owen, 9, loves playing soccer, practicing photography and eating pepperoni pizza. He's also passionate about caring for others. His dad, Craig, says if someone falls on the playing field, Owen is often the first to offer a hand. Twice a year, his family delivers stacks of their favorite pizza and submarine sandwiches as a gift to staff at Children's National Hospital. "I get lots of hugs when we go," Owen says. "Everybody is happy to see me and asks what I've been up to."

The lunch deliveries started as a way for Owen's family to thank staff who cared for him when he was younger and to boost morale. "Staff in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) don't get a lot of repeat patient visits to see the improvement of a child after hospitalization," says Owen's mom, Karen. "We wanted them to see how well he is doing and celebrate what 'good' looks like."

For Owen, the food donations are a way to share his appreciation for something very important to him: how hard care providers work to get kids home. "I know how it feels to be stuck in the hospital," he says. "I want kids to get back home to their families as fast as possible."

At age 5, Owen spent more than 100 days at Children's National, after Elizabeth Wells, MD, senior vice president of Neuroscience and Behavioral Medicine Center diagnosed him with a rare and sometimes fatal form of epilepsy called Febrile Infection-Related Epilepsy Syndrome (FIRES). He had hundreds of seizures and was in a medically induced coma for more than a month. He spent time in our PICU and recovered in the Neurology acute care unit.

Owen and his family support the hospital in two additional ways. They participate in neighborhood bake sales throughout the year, along with a robust group of their cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, classmates, and even Owen's school principal and teachers. One 2023 bake sale in Arlington, Virginia, raised $3,000 in a single day. Customers bought homemade cookies, brownies and sticky marshmallow cereal bars that Owen and his friends made. "He loves to work as the cashier and his little brother, Ethan, works the crowd," says Karen.

At bake sales, Owen also asks customers to sign up to support his family's enthusiastic fundraising effort, as a team named Fighting FIRES With Owen, for our annual Race for Every Child. Karen was Race co-chair in 2024 and will serve again in 2025. In all, the family has raised nearly $250,000 for the hospital for research related to neuroinflammatory diseases. "The people at Children's National saved our son's life, and he is still in ongoing care," Karen says. "We hope to inspire staff to keep fighting hard for all the kids in their care."