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Badge Bowl Dedicates Event To Girl With Leukemia

JIM REED / The Tampa Tribune

Tampa firefighter Michael Pease lifts Maya Houtz into a fire engine at an event to promote Saturday's Badge Bowl.

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 12, 2007

b>Photos: Children Enjoy The Pre-Badge Bowl Festivities

TAMPA — Scooting down a playground slide, 4-year-old Brooke Martin looks like a happy toddler.

She loves to sing songs from television shows like "The Doodlebops" and "Hannah Montana," her mother, TiffanyÖ Martin, said. But sprinkled among her vocabulary are jarring terms from weekly visits to St. Joseph's Hospital.

"She'll automatically ask, 'Am I getting a finger-poke or a tubie today?'" Martin said.

Brooke has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Because of her family's financial woes, the Children's Cancer Center and the nonprofit Foundation of Courage selected her as this year's honoree at Saturday's annual Badge Bowl fundraising flag-football game between Tampa police and Tampa Fire Rescue.

"It couldn't have come at a better time for us," Brooke's mother said today.

Martin, 26, works as a customer-service representative at Lowe's; her husband had struggled between construction jobs until recently, she said. The couple also has a 21-month-old daughter, Hailey.

The Badge Bowl is the sixth face-off between the police department's Gladiators and the fire department's Firestorm. Half the money raised will benefit Brooke's family. The remainder will be split between the Children's Cancer Center and the Foundation of Courage, organizers say.

Last year's event raised about $40,000, said Mike Pease, a Tampa firefighter and one of the organizers.

Brooke was diagnosed through a blood test on Jan. 17, 2006. "Your heart stops. Everything just freezes around you," her mother said.

The family soon adapted to Brooke's treatment plan: weekly lab tests, oral chemotherapy medication nightly at home, additional chemotherapy medication through a port on her body (the "tubie") and a spinal tap every 12 weeks, her mother said.

Brooke hates the medication — "I pretty much hold her down," Martin said — but like other children at the cancer center, she's resilient.

"I don't know how these kids do it. You watch these kids, they're strong," Martin said.

The Badge Bowl is bittersweet, Pease said. Of the five other children the fundraiser has helped, only two are still alive: the first year's recipient, Taylor Dumke,Ö who had a brain tumor, and last year's recipient, Jimmy Reichert,Ö whose leukemia is in remission.

So far, Brooke's prognosis seems good, her mother said. "You take it one day at a time, and always think positively," she said.

Kickoff for the Badge Bowl is 7 p.m. Saturday at Wharton High School, 20150 Bruce B. Downs Blvd. Gates open at 5 p.m. for tug-of-war and other events. Admission is $5 for adults and $1 for children ages 12 and younger.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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