Award

Megan “Betty Crocker” Berryman, RN, NRP, PHTLS, ACLS, CCRN started her journey with Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times as a cabin counselor while she was in nursing school. She started working as a RN on a Medical-Surgical Nursing unit. Her experience through the years were many, from bedside nurse to Rapid Assessment Team/Code Team nurse. She worked in the Emergency Room and made the transition into Flight Nursing working with both emergency 911 calls and interfaculty transports of patients of all ages and diagnoses. She recently became trained as a SANE nurse taking care of forensic exams for domestic violence and sexual assault victims.

At Camp, through the years, she has been involved as a summer camp nurse in the med-shed and also assisting on family camp weekends. People who work there and the campers that attend all love her. She was given the name “Betty Crocker” because of the baked goods she would bring and share at camp. She treats each camper/patient as a person and not just as a diagnosis. She not only makes sure that she understands their medical needs, but also the psychological, social and emotional needs. She easily connects with the kids in the cabin and goes out of her way to make the kids visiting the med shed at ease and always goes the extra mile to check in on them.

Erin Marlin, RN, BSN, PHN, CPAN, began her nursing career after obtaining her license in 1999. She specializes in Critical Care as well as Post Anesthesia Recovery. Erin is currently employed at Keck Medical Center of USC. Her experience includes Trauma,Transplant, Cardiac, Neurosurgery, Emergency and more. Erin has worked in the academic hospital settings in places such as New York, Chicago, Orange County & LA, California. Erin is a member of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) as well as the American Board of Perianesthesia Nursing (ABPANC).

Tami-Okumura-Nieders is a pediatric hematology/oncology nurse with over 35 years of experience in the nursing profession. After obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from UCLA in 1982, she began her career at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. During the following years, Tami became involved with Camp Good Times. She remembers working in the "med shed" in the very early days of camp, when it was being run out of the back of Nurse Barbara's truck. In addition to volunteering as a nurse, Tami also did a session as a cabin counselor, and even got to travel to Norway with a group of campers. She has been a part of many memorable experiences throughout the evolution of camp. After taking a hiatus to raise her 2 daughters, Tami returned to the med shed in 2012 and has volunteered as a camp nurse every summer since. She is now happy to have her daughters involved in CRMFGT as well.

Elizabeth “Spot” Kessler was first introduced to cancer when her brother’s best friend was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 16. Shortly after his death she was told by two different people in her life to reach out to Brian Crater, the new camp director at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times. Liz and Brian hit it off and a long personal and professional relationship began. Liz started as a volunteer, then became a staff member, then went back to volunteering. Through her years at camp, Liz often thought about becoming a nurse, particularly after spending so much time with the camp nurses. 

About 5 years ago, Liz quit her corporate job and went back to school to become a pediatric hematology/oncology/blood and marrow transplant nurse specifically due to her work with Camp. She currently lives in Seattle but comes back every summer as a nurse because Camp is her home. 

Liz also volunteers with Nick of Time Foundation which preforms electrocardiogram, echocardiogram, and teaches CPR to local high schools in an effort to avoid sudden cardiac arrest. She has spent eight of the last twelve months with Floating Doctors, putting on medical clinics for 24 different indigenous communities in the Bocas Del Toro Archipelago in Panama. 

Diane DiMarco Davis, better known as 3D at Camp, began volunteering with Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times in the late 80’s, not long after Camp was first founded.  A nursing student at USC at the time, Diane recalls her mother, Donna telling her about an interesting local pediatric doctor who appeared on the Phil Donahue Show.  That doctor was one of Camp’s founders, Dr. Stu Siegel. On the TV talk show, Dr. Siegal shared the trials that children with cancer and their families face and how Camp Good Times was having a positive impact on their lives.  Diane decided to look into this special Camp and, what was a chance recommendation, soon became a lifelong passion.  Diane started at Camp as a cabin counselor but has also served as an activity counselor and a staff director. As an ER nurse, Diane’s emergency skills complimented the Oncology team in the Med Shed.  Diane was able to make the transition to the med shed easily and became a part of the critical medical team that makes Camp possible each session.  It is because of the 24 hour medical care Diane and her colleagues provide campers that they and their parents are at ease knowing that campers are well cared for should any medical needs arise.

In 1982, Debbie Ward was a mom with three children when she began a life-changing journey.  Her son Sammy became another victim of the terrible disease called cancer.  1984, after 2 years of treatment, Sammy had the opportunity to go to a wonderful camp named Camp Good Times.  There, he became independent and had the most wonderful time.  In April of 1985, Sammy lost his battle with Leukemia.  During his illness, Debbie had learned so much about cancer that she decided to go back to school and become a Registered Nurse.  She graduated in 1990, and as dear friend had once told her, "When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade."   Debbie continued participating in Camp for eight years while attending school and after by helping recruit campers from Kern County through a self-help group for parents of children impacted by cancer called Candlelighters.  After three years of being a nurse, Debbie began to volunteer in Camp’s Med Shed and has done so every summer since 1993.  Debbie is currently the Nurse Manager at CVS/Coram Healthcare, where for the past eighteen years she has worked as an infusion nurse and providing care to patients in their homes.  Debbie says that it has been an honor and pleasure to participate with Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times since 1985 as a volunteer/RN.

While going through nursing school, a copy of ‘Working Nurse’ crossed her path.  In that little nursing magazine was an article written by a Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times volunteer nurse, Fran Wiley.  Fran’s article was about the joys and rewards of camp nursing.  Debi was fascinated, and kept the magazine to remind herself what she wanted to do after finishing nursing school.

She volunteered at summer camp where she met camp volunteer nurses, Barb Britt, Fran Wiley and Dr. Susan. Debi was totally hooked, in love and wished she could be at camp for all of the summer. After that life changing summer, Debi began requesting a week of her vacation each summer to devote to being at camp, typically pestering Camp’s Associate Executive Director Brian Crater, for dates so she could get those vacation requests in at work before summer the vacation dates were all gone!

Her incredible dedication and commitment to camp in volunteering and her advocacy and help with outreach and recruitment at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has been invaluable. Debi has also been influential in securing donations of medication for Camp’s Med Shed.

A Peace Corp alum and Seattle Children’s Hospital nurse, Elise Reay has travelled all over the world to help people in need. Since 2005, she has traveled with ReSurge to help men, women, and children in Asia, Africa, and South America.

On her first trip with ReSurge, Elise travelled to Quang Ngai-Vietnam. When recalling her first ReSurge trip, Elise says, “I was immediately hooked…I felt at home.”Just this fall, Elise returned from Tanzania and she is tremendously grateful to, “ReSurge and Barco’s Nightingales Foundation for supporting and acknowledging nurses with a humanitarian purpose.”

Tina Cerruti’s passion for volunteerism and desire to contribute to the medical profession began in high school when she volunteered for the local community hospital as an inpatient nurse’s helper. In that role, she discovered the tremendous rewards in providing care and comfort to people dealing with hospitalization and various medical concerns. During her 30-year career as an R.N., she has worked in medical and surgical intensive care as well as cardiac care, and has been active in advancing the role of nurses through various medical networks and through her involvement with the California Nurses Association. She is committed to bringing greater public awareness to the concept of patient’s rights and to recognition of the nurse’s role as a patient advocate.

In 1972 after Barbara’s first day as a Pediatrics-Hematology-Oncology Nurse, she found a passion that has remained for the length of her career. Ten years later, Dr. Stuart Siegel, co-founder of Camp Good Times, asked Barbara to be Camp’s first nurse. She immediately volunteered, believing in what camp could accomplish the minute it was conceived.

After her first volunteer session in 1983, Fran brought more than her academic knowledge. She’s shared her love for camping and the desire to allow all campers, regardless of their situation, the possibility to heal in ways that can’t always happen in hospitals and clinics using modern medicine.

Cheryl Wraa, an original flight nurse who flew for 14 years, served as a founder, contributing author, and instructor for the Flight Nurse Trauma Course. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from CSUS where she worked with the university’s Trauma and Emergency Surgery Program for most of her career, serving as manager since 2006. She served as clinical faculty for the CSUS BSN nursing program in advanced medical/surgical for and is an educator for ReSurge International and a member of the ReSurge Nursing Committee and has traveled to Vietnam, Bangladesh, Ghana and Nepal. Cheryl is senior clinical editor for the Journal of Emergency Nursing, has written chapters for textbooks, and co-authored a medical/surgical nursing textbook.

Maria Pedersen works at Sutter Davis Hospital, Davis, California, and volunteers with ReSurge International and XP Family Support Group. She earned her AA degree in nursing from Cuesta College more than 30 years ago and has been a nurse and nurse-educator ever since. Maria volunteers with ReSurge and has completed tens of surgical medical missions over the last 13 years.

Rosemary Welde has been a medical volunteer with ReSurge International for 28 years, served on its board from 2001 to 2012 and has volunteered her time on 35 medical missions for the benefit of children. In addition, she has spent over 25 years as an operating room nurse at Stanford, and is also an educator, lecturer and coach in her field of health care management.

A registered nurse, Dawn Yost has devoted two weeks of every year to providing operating room nursing care on surgical team trips with ReSurge to Ecuador, Peru, Africa, Honduras, Nepal, Myanmar and Vietnam. On most of the 16 trips for which she has volunteered, she has served as head nurse. She is also a member of the Nursing, Quality Assurance and Medical Services committees for ReSurge.