Sick Children Get Royal Treatment

TAMPA - Almost a dozen pageant winners, dazzling in their stylish dresses and impeccable makeup, plunked themselves down across from sick young girls at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital last week. The pageant queens painstakingly painted nails and applied blush to the girls' faces.

Outside, Tampa Fire Rescue firefighters hoisted hospitalized young boys up onto a gleaming red truck. Some boys, yanked at the steering wheel, while others, in hospital pajamas and plastic firefighter helmets, climbed on the back. Some were still attached to IVs.

Two to three times a year, hospital administrators schedule a kids day like this.

"It's my job to make sure the kids are doing well," said Lisa Andrew, the hospital's child-life specialist, who coordinated the day.

And this day was a crowning achievement.

Girls, some not so sick, others very sick, got the full queen treatment. "It is queen for a day for the girls," she said, "and hero for a day for the boys."

Between 25 and 35 children were sprung from their rooms to go down to the lobby and take part in the party. They made arts and crafts and buddied up with blue-shirted firefighters and paramedics.

Two-year-old Austin Justice of Tampa just couldn't get enough of the fire truck. He falls into the "not very sick" category, having just had his tonsils out. He beamed as he sat behind the steering wheel of the truck.

"He loves fire trucks," said his mom, Micheal. "He loves to drive, too."

Leah Campanella runs the Tampa chapter of Queen for a Day, a nonprofit national organization. She said such events, in which pageant winners are called into service, happen several times a year. Pageant queens from as far away as Lakeland, Pasco County and Clearwater participated in the event.

"We're here to pamper the kids," she said.

At one table, 3-year-old Savannah Allison, bald from treatment for an undisclosed disease, had a serious look. She let Miss Pasco County Fair, Lisa Noury, paint on nail polish and brush on some blush, but Savannah wanted to dab on her own lipstick.

Noury, 19, said she has done about four such events during her tenure. She could only grin at her young charge as Savannah pursed her lips and looked into a mirror. "She's having a ball with that lipstick," Noury said.