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Why the heart loves young swimmers

The Children's Heart Foundation 24-hour swim raises money for children's heart disease research.

By ASHLEE CLARK
Published July 7, 2006

CLEARWATER - Four-year-old Kalani Huggins calls it her "other belly button" - the small dent on her side a few inches above the waistband of her lime-green bathing suit.

The mark was where doctors put the tube to feed Kalani as a newborn. When she was just 11 days old, she had open-heart surgery after doctors discovered she had congenital heart defects.

"(Her heart) kind of looked like Swiss cheese, to be serious," said Kalani's mother Marlee Huggins, 34, of Oldsmar.

But unlike the scar, the effects of Kalani's heart problems are not so obvious anymore. By noon Thursday, she had already been swimming for about two hours at the Golda Meir/Kent Jewish Center - all in the name of helping to raise awareness of children living with heart defects.

Kalani was a participant in Laps of Love, a 24-hour event where the Children's Heart Foundation used swimming to raise money for children's heart disease research. The goal of the fundraiser was to have at least one person making laps in the community center pool from 9 a.m. Thursday to 9 a.m. today.

This is the third year for Laps of Love. Organizers expected about 250 people to participate. Last year, the event raised about $2,500.

Late Thursday morning, children in bright bathing suits swarmed the lanes of the community center's pool. About 200 children from the center's day camp, Camp Or Hashemesh, took shifts swimming in the morning and afternoon, filling the indoor pool with playful shouts and splashing.

The younger kids, most of whom were pumping their feet as they balanced on long purple floats, probably didn't fully understand the seriousness of children's heart disease, said Jeff Krieger, director of the day camp and an organizer of Laps of Love.

But the campers had been learning about congenital heart defects and their own connection to the illness.

Shara Himmel, an 18-year-old camp counselor from Seminole, was born with heart problems and received a heart transplant when she was 4.

Most of the campers know about her heart disease.

"It's like a personal cause for them, too, because they know someone," said Himmel, a recent graduate of St. Petersburg High School's IB program who plans to go to the University of Florida in the fall.

Krieger's involvement is also personal - his older brother Richard died of congenital heart disease in 1948 when he was 3.

"He died on the operating table because the technology wasn't available," said Krieger, 53.

Almost 60 years later, kids like Kalani are living active lives and teaching others about the disease's prevalence.

"She's not a freak," Kalani's mother said. "She's making the world better, and she's only 4."

Ashlee Clark can be reached at 445-4158 or aclark@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 6, 2006, 23:44:04]