From the heart

Students at St. John the Baptist school shoot hoops and jump rope to raise money for American Heart Assn. in honor of boy with heart defect. Tommy Council is only 3, but he’s already been a familiar presence at St. John the Baptist Catholic School for most of his life.

Even if he’s just a face in a photograph.

Tommy, the son of a former St. John student, was born with a heart defect and required his first surgery just days after his birth. His mother, Anna Marie Rotonda, had graduated from St. John years earlier, but as soon as the school heard of her child’s condition, it jumped behind his cause.

“We put up pictures in our office during his critical time and prayed for him daily,” said Sister Mary Vianney, the school’s principal. “It went about a year and a half before we knew Tommy was going to make it.”

After a series of surgeries, Tommy appears to have pulled through; the last two years, he’s even visited classrooms at St. John.

And the school hasn’t forgotten about his cause. On Friday, to cap the 32nd annual Catholic Schools Week, St. John held a “Hoops for Hearts” fundraiser to raise money for the American Heart Assn.

All morning at the Costa Mesa private school, classes went out to the blacktop for 20 minutes at a time to shoot basketballs and jump rope. Each participating student had garnered pledges over the last few weeks, with some netting hundreds of dollars from family and friends.

The American Heart Assn. has run “Hoops for Hearts” for years, with a number of schools holding the fundraiser annually. When Debbie Martin, the association’s youth market director for Orange County, sent a letter to St. John inviting them to participate, she didn’t know about Tommy’s history. However, it made a perfect fit, and fifth-grade teacher Mary McMenamin agreed to organize the Friday event.

Martin, who sends letters to dozens of schools each year, said she has dealt with campuses that have a connection to heart disease.

“I get a lot of kids who come up to me at events and say, ‘I had heart surgery when I was born,’ and then run off,” Martin said.

A display at the back of the playground showed how extensive the problem was: a poster board covered in pink slips, listing friends and relatives of the St. John community who had suffered or died of heart conditions. For some students and parents, gathering pledges wasn’t difficult.

“We just told them it was for the American Heart Assn. and they were willing to help out,” said Theresa Strachan, whose son, first-grader Bobby Strachan, netted $218 from her co-workers at Argo-Tech.

As Vianney pointed out, the fundraiser benefited the circulatory system in another way.

“The hope is that they’ll keep at it,” she said as students jumped rope and shot hoops around the blacktop. “We want them to keep exercising.”20060204iu4zjkncDON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)Volunteer Annabell Gratton, teacher Janet Hildebrande, and students Ali Ross and Kaylee LeFave jump rope at the Hoops for Hearts fundraiser at St. John the Baptist Catholic School.