On Wednesday, April 28, 21-year-old Chef Jack Witherspoon, former Miller Children’s & Women’s patient donated hundreds of his Skonies to hardworking staff at MemorialCare’s Long Beach Medical Center and Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach. Skonies, created and perfected by Jack, are a cross between a cookie and a scone.
COVID-19 has impacted the lives of health care workers, so Jack provided Skonies as a way to pay it forward for the heroes on the frontline, some of which he has a personal connection.
Jack is a former patient of the Jonathan Jaques Children’s Cancer Institute at Miller Children’s & Women’s, where he was treated for leukemia. Jack had less than a 50% chance of survival and his battle with leukemia lasted nearly 10 years. He relapsed three times between 2- and 11-years-old.
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They draw Pac-Man and boots, bear claws and mountains, and though Shane does well Esther is on an unbelievable hot streak, so much so that when she guesses “Elephants!” from the barest of sketches, Shane gives her that kind of amazed/angry look that says, “Get out of my head!”
The two of them soon erupt into the kind of laughter often shared by old friends. But, they are not old friends.
Shane Sweis is an 11-year-old boy being treated at Long Beach Memorial’s Jonathan Jaques Children’s Cancer Institute for acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow.