Columnist Susan Snyder: Walker stays on the move

Tuesday, March 19, 2002 | 8:26 a.m.

The wonder of Holly Walker is wondering when she sleeps.

The 14-going-on-15 Green Valley High School freshman runs varsity track and cross-country, plays soccer and also operates a service group she founded (by herself) when she was 12.

"It makes me feel so happy when I feel like I'm doing something good for someone else," Walker said.

I met Walker at her Henderson home last week. She tore into the house about four minutes later than she planned, still breathless -- and probably starving -- from track practice.

But anything she was in want of faded as she talked about Generation Hope, her service project dedicated to helping children cope after being diagnosed with cancer, AIDS, sickle cell anemia and "other catastrophic diseases."

For her charity work, Walker has been given a national volunteer award from Seventeen magazine and Cover Girl cosmetics. She will join five other winners for an April ceremony in New York City, where she will receive $10,000 for Generation Hope and a $10,000 college scholarship. Winners will be featured in the August edition of Seventeen.

Walker first became interested in easing the pain of terminally ill people during her grandfather's last months. He died of cancer when she was 11.

"I talked to him about the pain and the different people who affected him, and how people touched his heart with the things they did for him," Walker said.

Soon afterward, she says, she walked into a neighborhood pharmacy and spotted a collection jar on the counter for the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. She asked the pharmacist how to get involved, and it turned out he was the foundation's president.

He told her about Spinoza Bears, which the foundation couldn't afford to buy. Each cuddly teddy bear comes with a set of tapes so it can "talk" to a child about chemotherapy, hospitals and the other "scary days." They cost $150 each.

So Walker created Generation Hope and started the "Miracle Minute" at her junior high school. Each morning for one week, she played an excerpt from one of the tapes on the school public address system while other students passed collection jars around the classes. The project spread to the elementary schools that fed her junior high.

"We raised enough money and bought enough bears for that whole year," Walker said. "It just blew me away. I thought if I can do this, what can I do next?"

Next she knocked on doors of local businesses and raised $10,000 for Camp Cartwheel, a free, weeklong summer day camp for children with catastrophic diseases and their siblings. She volunteers at the camp and hopes to be a counselor when she turns 15.

In July Walker assembled a group of teens to sew and decorate 215 felt gift bags that Generation Hope fills with toys and goodies for United Airlines' annual Christmas Fantasy Flight for terminally ill children.

And most recently, Walker secured $50,000 worth of toys to stock the toy chest at Sunrise Hospital's pediatric oncology unit. Patients receive a toy to take home after visits.

"I feel like everyone is so, 'me, me, me,' " Walker said. "But if they'd just sit back and do something for someone else, it would make their whole day better."