I thought I would share this story from the St. Louis Blues, it’s pretty cool! The boy in the picture below is the brother of our friend from Paxton, IL. Tanner was donating his stem cells to Ryan this past Monday at SLCH. Please pray for Ryan as he has been in SLCH since September 8th because of having no ANC and had been fighting fevers.

Hinote’s Heroes Aims to Make Impact in Community

Chris Pinkert | St. Louis Blues Online

Oct 25, 2007, 10:00 AM EDT

Six-year-old Tanner Coe’s face lit up the moment Dan Hinote walked in the room.

Coe had been lying in bed all day, bored and cycling through the channels of the mounted television set at St. Louis Children’s Hospital on Monday before Hinote, along with several of his Blues teammates, stopped by for a visit.

Dan Hinote plays an Xbox game with Tanner Coe, 6, who was helping his brother Ryan, 14, in his fight with AML leukemia (Photo by Mark Buckner).

“It was neat. It helped cheer him up,” said Michele Coe, Tanner’s mother.

Tanner was donating stem cells to his 14-year old brother Ryan, who was diagnosed in 2006 with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Ryan recently completed three rounds of chemotherapy and was cancer-free, but needed a bit a bit of a boost to help his body recover.

Tanner, it turns out, was a perfect match and more than willing to help his older brother.

“Tanner’s been a real trooper,” his mother said.

It seems fitting, then, that Hinote and his teammates would show up and present Tanner with a camouflage T-shirt bearing the logo of ‘Hinote’s Heroes,’ a charitable organization started by Hinote to help improve hospital conditions for children who are battling cancer and their families.

On Monday, Hinote donated several laptops and Xboxes to St. Louis Children’s Hospital so that kids like Tanner and Ryan wouldn’t be so bored if they have to make another trip to the hospital.

“If we can keep the kids happy at all times, as much as they can be in this environment, then I think overall, you’re going to see kids improve,” Hinote said. “If that means having laptops, Xboxes, DVD players, trips or tickets to a game, if we can help keep the morale on a higher level, I think their treatments will work that much better.”

Destiny Allen, a 12-year-old from Wood River, Illinois with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, said that having computers and video games can be a huge help in taking a child’s mind off their treatments.

“It can keep them occupied, like whenever people get blood transfusions, sometimes they don’t like to see it,” she said.

Allen has undergone 2 ½ years worth of chemotherapy and expects to receive another year’s worth of treatment. She has made more than 15 trips to the hospital since her diagnosis but she intends to be cancer free by time she gets to high school, where she hopes to participate on the cheerleading squad and become a teacher after graduation.

These are the stories that really drive Hinote to make an impact in the community.

“It’s truly an inspiration to see how great these people are fighting this terrible cancer,” Hinote said. “They’re upbeat, they’re happy and they’re great about what little life they have or may not have, and they live day to day.”Hinote’s energy and passion for the game of hockey are evident each time he steps onto the ice for a shift with the St. Louis Blues, but his energy and passion off the ice probably better defines him.