Alice Stevens: A Gift to Ensure the Future of Canines For Kids

For Alice Stevens, her connection to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta started 80 years ago when she was just 4 years old.

She had her tonsils removed during a surgery at Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children, which merged with Scottish Rite Children’s Medical Center in 1998 to become Children’s.

“I remember my experience being wonderful,” Alice says. “I did not want to ride on the stretcher to go to the operating room, so there was this kind orderly who held my hand and we walked together while he pushed the stretcher.”

The most fascinating coincidence is that a few decades later, Alice’s daughter, Ali, also had her tonsils taken out at Egleston and she, too, was walked to the operating room by that same orderly.

Because of her experiences as a child and mother at Children’s, as well as the System’s work in the community treating children like her and her daughter, Alice has decided to create an endowment through her estate plan. It will support the Children’s Canines For Kids Program that she has so passionately supported since it was founded a decade ago. The Alice Stevens Canines For Kids Endowment will be funded upon her death through a designation in her will.

“This endowment will carry on and perpetuate, helping Canines For Kids continue, rather than just a one-time gift to them,” Alice says. “This is a gift that I can give after I’m gone that will continue to support something that I believe in and love.”

Alice first learned about therapy dogs in the 1990s while teaching yoga to a client who told her about attending a graduation ceremony for Canine Assistants, which is a dog-training organization that specializes in placing service dogs with people who have difficulty with mobility, epilepsy or type 1 diabetes, as well as pediatric hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.

Alice fell in love with the work at Canine Assistants and immediately began supporting their cause.

While volunteering in 2009 at the New 95.5 and AM750 WSB Care-a-Thon that benefits Children’s, Alice met a nurse who asked if she had heard about Casper, a facility dog that was trained at Canine Assistants and was visiting patients in the hospitals.

Casper was the first facility dog in Canines For Kids and worked with former Volunteer Services Manager, Lisa Kinsel. Following introduction to Lisa and Casper, Alice provided initial funding to add another dog to the program, a golden retriever named Bella. Bella has spent the last 9 years with Kara Klein in the Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children, Children’s child advocacy center. She now assists Kara in leading the Canines For Kids program at Children’s, visiting patients throughout the hospitals and various outpatient clinics.

“I am happy and grateful for the opportunity to help this amazing program,” Alice says. “Because Lisa’s idea was strongly supported by leadership and the community, the program has benefited thousands of patients, parents and staff.”

In mid-June, Alice was excited to learn that a facility dog named in honor of her daughter, Ali, was matched with a handler at Children’s and will begin working with children in the rehabilitation and respiratory therapy departments.

“I have seen very good things with the program,” Alice adds. “It is growing and Kara is doing a wonderful job. It makes me happy to be able to have the opportunity to help with this.”

Contact Ward Sullivan at 404-785-9809 or ward.sullivan@choa.org to learn more about how you can leave an endowment for Children’s.