VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – In our Children of Change segments, WAVY.com features children in the area who are working hard to make our community a better place to live. In March 2021, we featured Keira Lozada. At the time, she was an 8th grader at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in Virginia Beach. She helped create a fundraiser for the Heartbeat Bear Project at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.
Now, Lozada is a junior at Catholic High School. As a member of the National Honor Society, she created a fundraiser to once again raise funds for this program. The Heartbeat Bear Project provides families with a recording of the last heartbeats of their child before they pass away. That heartbeat is forever memorialized inside a teddy bear.
“Anything that we can do to help them is just so important, and we have to work together as a community to help these people that are in so much pain,” said Lozada.
This year, as part of a community service project, students at Catholic High had the opportunity to donate to the Heartbeat Bear Project.
“We offered a Christe service opportunity for kids who donated five or more dollars, and that’s what drove people to donate. Not getting something, but giving something. So, they’re giving twice fold money in their time and service,” said Lozada.
She says the Heartbeat Bear Project helps families understand their child will never be forgotten.
“This child, although their body has passed on, their soul stays with them and their memory lives on forever. That’s what this is. It’s legacy building, and this child, although physically is gone, will stay mentally and emotionally and will never really leave them,” said Lozada.
Mary Katherine “Kit” Tate is a chaplain at CHKD. She is with the families when a child’s final heartbeat is recorded, and the bear is put into their arms.
“Sometimes, to be honest, when they get the bear, it’s one of the few smiles that we see and they hug the bears and they hold on to them and they smile, and it’s just that almost like a visceral connection to their child,” said Tate.
The students of Catholic High School raised more than $2,300 dollars for the Heartbeat Bear Project. That will help create more than 200 bears for families.
“We can only do this because of the work and the generosity of Saint Gregory’s and now Catholic. We don’t have a budget item for (the Heartbeat Bears). As Keira so articulately said, so much of the difficulty with people when we lose patients are because parents are worried that folks are going to forget their children and their identity changes, especially if they only have one child. Am I still a parent? Are people going to remember that I’m a mom? Are they going to remember that I’m a dad? But also, are people going to remember my child, the most precious thing in your life and you lose them? So, we do a lot of legacy building. I feel like the Heartbeat Bears are the most important, because it’s such a physical and emotional connection,” said Tate.
The chaplain said she is in awe of Keira and her efforts to help fund Heartbeat Bears over the years.
“She found out about it because her mom happens to be a cardiologist at CHKD, and she knew that they did this. When Keira found out that we had done them for a few people, but it wasn’t something that we could do for everyone, she took it upon herself to go to school and raise the money and to be able to fund this. So, we’re in our fifth year now of of doing this. So, because of their fundraising, we are not only able to give one to a family, we have families that are blended. Families and parents that don’t reside together. We’re able to give one to mom and to dad.”
If you are interested in donating to the Heartbeat Bear Program at CHKD, Tate says you can send a donation to the hospital.
“They would just need to specify for the Heartbeat Bear program, and they can actually go to make it easier for some folks, go on the website and there’s a way to donate money on the website and they would just specify that it’s for the heartbeat.”