Benefit Dinner For Valley Boy With Leukemia

While an 11-year-old Beacon Falls boy undergoes leukemia treatment at Children’s Hospital Boston, a mass of Valley residents are banding together to raise money to help his family pay the costly medical bills. 

The latest fundraiser for Nicolas Lucas will be a benefit ziti dinner held at 4 p.m. Saturday at Trinity Church in Seymour. 

The fundraiser was organized by Echo Hose Ambulance, Seymour Ambulance and Beacon Falls Ambulance corps. 

He’s such a good kid,” said Robin Andrews, who works for Echo Hose Ambulance in Shelton and taught Nicolas in his First Communion class a few years back. I decided to see if I could get the EMS community I was involved in involved. They just jumped in.”

The Diagnosis

Nicolas went to the hospital in September thinking he had a stomach bug, his mother told Andrews in a recent e‑mail. He was referred to Yale, where he was diagnosed with Lymphoblastic Leukemia with Philadelphia Chromosomes and CML chromosomes. 

The cancer is advanced and high risk, Seleste Lucas wrote.

Nicolas has been in Boston getting chemotherapy treatment and bone marrow transplants. He is expected to be there for several more weeks, Andrews said. 

But his treatment will last from three to four years. 

(View the family’s CaringBridge profile, with updates about Nicolas’ treatments, here.)

He is such a brave little guy. He told us he was going to be strong, he was going to be ARMY STRONG,” Lucas wrote on the CaringBridge profile page. That is our motto as a family we have shown how strong we are.”

The treatments are expensive. Andrews, who works in medical billing, anticipated the medical bills could reach the $1 million mark by the time the treatment is done. 

The Fundraiser

The fundraiser, at Trinity Church at 91 Church St. in Seymour, includes dinner, dessert and entertainment by Mark Lanzieri, the courthouse crooner.”

Tickets cost $10 for adults and $5 for children under 12.

Andrews said it’s amazing to see so many different people in the community come together to help out a family in need. Several local families and businesses have donated the food and entertainment for the dinner. 

It’s the second fundraiser held for Nicolas since the beginning of February. 

On Feb. 6, Oxford Academy of Hair Design hosted a fashion show at Lanza’s in Ansonia. (To see pictures from the fashion show, click here.)

Owner Kellie Steeves said the school hosts a fashion show each year to raise money for a different cause. Steeves said she is friends with Lucas’ mother, Seleste, and said it just made sense to raise the money for Nicolas. 

About 300 people went to the fashion show and they raised about $8,000, Steeves said. 

He’s been very positive,” Steeves said. His saying is Army Strong.’ We used that as our theme. The last walk for the fashion show was Army-inspired.”

Other dinners have been held for Nicolas, and the Portuguese community in Beacon Falls has hosted bone marrow drives. 

To Help

For more information about Saturday’s benefit dinner, call (203) 924‑5500. Oxford Academy for Hair Design and Naugatuck Savings Bank in Oxford are also collecting donations for a fund set up for Nicolas. 

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