Dad realizes girl's dream
Foundation named for young cancer victim
By Sherry Parmet
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 12, 2004

CARMEL VALLEY – A foundation that celebrates the life of a Torrey Pines High School student who died of cancer is providing the financial backing for other teenagers to do good deeds.

It will enable one student to build 60 bookcases for foster children, and a Torrey Pines service club to buy art supplies for children with terminal illnesses.

It also will allow the school's tennis athletes to give free lessons to underprivileged children.

The Janice Pai Foundation keeps alive the memory of a Torrey Pines student who died last summer after a three-year battle with Hodgkin's disease, a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system. The foundation awards $5,000 a semester among students who present worthy project ideas. The foundation is almost entirely funded by Janice's father, who will sustain it as long as students continue to generate meaningful ideas for making the community better.

"We did not expect that our daughter would die so quickly and unexpectedly, and I miss her so very much," said Hui-Yu Pai. "I just could not let go of her. I felt that I needed to do something, and this foundation helps realize some of her dreams. With it I somehow feel she's still living and did not die in vain."

At 14, Janice Pai was stricken with cancer.

Even through transplants, radiation treatments and chemotherapy, Janice made education a priority. She did her homework and studied for the SAT while sitting in doctors' waiting rooms.

She postponed a stem cell transplant so she could take her Advanced Placement tests, which earn students college credit if they receive high scores.

Hui-Yu Pai, a Taiwanese immigrant and private investor who lives in Carmel Valley, said he didn't push Janice to drive herself so hard in school. He sometimes wondered if she wasn't pushing herself too much.

"But school was everything to her," Pai said.

Even after missing classes for a year, Janice returned as a junior to earn all A's with a course load packed with higher level Advanced Placement classes in chemistry, Spanish and advanced calculus.

"She never complained, never asked for any extra time and always did outstanding work that was thorough, accurate, articulate and creative," said Barbara Swovelin, Janice's former English teacher and the Torrey Pines liaison for the foundation.

Throughout her illness, Janice always wore her "signature smile," Pai said.

The $1,700 that sophomore Roger Lowe received from the foundation will enable him to build 60 bookcases for juveniles living at San Pasqual Academy, a residential education campus for foster teenagers in Escondido. The money will pay for pine wood, cutting tools and some books for Roger's Boy Scout project.

"This is my chance to show that I can be a leader and qualify for Eagle rank," he said.

Pai said he is excited about the undertaking.

It is "advocated by a well-to-do teenager who is willing to spend time and effort to care about others not as lucky as him," he said. "Deep inside me, personally and emotionally, I feel that I am substituting the care of those foster teenagers for my love of a teenager I lost."

Several other projects have been approved:

• Teen Korps, a Torrey Pines chapter of the national service club Kids Korps USA, will use the money to purchase arts and crafts and games for the Cardiff-based nonprofit ARTS, or A Reason to Survive. This outreach program recruits volunteers to work on visual and performing arts projects with children who are terminally or chronically ill, mentally or physically handicapped, abused, homeless or poor. Teen Korps will receive $500.
• Tennis players at Torrey Pines will teach tennis to children from low-income families in San Diego County. The foundation initially will provide $500 for busing, snacks and fliers to promote the project.
• The Key Club, a service group, will start a recycling program, with students meeting weekly to empty bins placed on campus for plastic. The foundation awarded this group $1,000 for materials.
• The foundation will award $1,000 to Student Success Services, which organizes forums on teenage issues for parents and students. Speakers discuss making good choices and coping with pressure and disappointment.

Pai said he hopes through this foundation students acquire an appreciation for life, either through their community service projects or by learning his daughter's story. The foundation's Web site is www.janicepaifoundation.org.