The family dining table was covered with more than 150 clear bags with bright red bows that were expertly tied to each bag. Some of those small packages contained an Amazon or Target gift card for a teenage boy or girl. Other packages contained a cosmetics collection or art supply set that a teenage girl might cherish.
Robbie Louk, 16, and his mother, Therese Louk, were conducting the final inspection of all gifts that had been brought to the house by Robbie’s Boy Scout Troop 398 of the La Cañada Church of the Latter Day Saints.
The gifts were all a result of an enthusiastic response to Louk’s handwritten letter emailed and mailed out a month earlier asking local neighbors and friends to donate to his ambitious Eagle Scout project — Project Hope for the Holidays. Robbie Louk, an LCHS junior, expressed in his letter that he wanted to help teenage patients at the City of Hope during the holidays.
Linda Perez, one of City of Hope’s several fundraising coordinators, waited in the Duarte hospital parking lot as two carloads of presents brought by Louk, Ryan Cowdin, one of Robbie’s La Cañada High School friends, and Louk’s parents drove up to the hospital building. Four red wagons were then immediately filled with the gift packages that amounted to more than $5,000 in value.
