Off to Iraq--with love
By NAOMI MUELLER
Published in the Asbury Park Press - 19 April 2003
NEPTUNE, NJ - Originally, all Julia Bean hoped for was to collect, and then donate, 200 teddy bears to pediatric patients at Jersey Shore Medical Center, Neptune. She never thought about sending the bears to the West Coast -- and never dreamed they would make their way to children in Iraqi hospitals.
 But thanks to Tom Riles -- the founder of the Empathy Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded seven years ago to help sick children -- the bears not only will make their way across the country, but also across the world.
In addition to donating some of the more than 200 teddy bears to pediatric patients at Jersey Shore, Bean and her classmates at St. Peter School will send the rest to California.
There, students with parents stationed at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base, will make get-well cards to accompany the bears, and residents in Riles' California community will collect additional bears. Some, Riles said, will stay in California, while others will be sent to children in Iraqi hospitals. Overall, Riles said he hopes to send 600 bears abroad.
"Our goal was to touch some hearts from one coast to another, and thanks to Julia's work we will not only touch hearts from coast to coast but all the way over in Iraq," Riles said.
When Riles founded the Empathy Foundation in 1996, he and other volunteers began giving teddy bears to children in local hospitals. Founded in New Jersey, the organization kept the bears in New Jersey -- until now.
After moving to California last July, Riles said it became his goal to expand the foundation. When Bean's mother told Riles last year that her daughter would be vice president of the student council and was interested in collecting bears for area hospitals, Riles said he recognized the possibility. The idea of sending some of the bears to Iraq occurred to him later.
In addition to being the Empathy Foundation's first coast-to-coast collection, this also is the first collection in California.
Other local organizations have became involved, such as Sunrise Assisted Living Facility in Wall, which plans to make cards to accompany the bears, and patients at Jersey Shore Medical Center planning on doing the same. Bean said Mclaughlins in Point Pleasant Beach has offered to pay to ship the bears to California.
"I never expected it to be this great," said Bean, who turned 14 today.
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