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Facing Tragedy as a Family
How the Reno Ronald McDonald House
®
Helped
the Fosters Face the Road to Recovery
O
n Monday, February 8,
as Reno Tahoe residents
recovered from Super Bowl
Sunday, 15-year-old Jillian
Foster and the members of the Davis
High School ski race team took to
the fresh powder at Boreal Mountain
Resort. Jillian’s father and step-mother,
Robert Foster and Christy Aguirre-
Foster, were at their Davis, California,
home when they learned she’d been
in an accident on the slopes. Thinking
it was just a broken bone, Robert left
for Reno alone to retrieve her. But later
that night, Christy got a phone call.
“Bobby was sobbing uncontrollably,
telling me Jillian severed her spinal
cord and broke her back,”
said Christy.
In fact, Jillian had suffered a T11-T12
spinal cord injury and her back was
out of alignment by a forty degree
angle. The accident at Boreal left her
paralyzed from the waist down.
In shock, Christy gathered items from
their home, including a change of
clothes for Robert but not herself.
“I
grabbed [Robert’s] toiletry case but
forgot so many personal items like my
toothbrush,”
Christy remembers.
“I
had no idea what to bring for Jillian.”
Christy drove the two and a half
hours from Davis, California, to Reno
that night in tears, recalling Jillian’s
recent fifth place recognition at a ski
race.
“I couldn’t stop thinking of how
this beautiful little girl I had known
since age four was about to face her
sixteenth birthday unable to walk and
now confined to a wheelchair,”
said
Christy.
“Why had this happened, why
to Jillian?”
Renown Children’s Hospital was
closest to Boreal and gave Jillian the
best option for immediate attention
but it meant the Fosters were separated
from their typical resources and
needed a place to stay.
“The moment someone mentioned we
had access to the Ronald McDonald
House I broke down,”
said Christy.
She’s talking about a moderately-sized
home painted in shades of blue, with
a red and white heart resting on its
front eaves tucked behind Renown
Health’s main parking garage. For
nearly thirty years it has served
as a home-away-from-home for
families just like the Fosters, families
who dealing with the life-altering
circumstances of their child’s accident,
illness or medical condition. The home
is known affectionately around the
region as the Reno Ronald McDonald
House
®
, the flagship program of five
total programs funded by Ronald
McDonald House Charities
®
Northern
Nevada, a local non-profit that keeps
families close during their greatest
times of need.
By Rachel Gattuso
Jillian Foster before her ski accident