NICOLE RIVERA
Jupiter

Bad year: Father killed, daughter sick with leukemia

This time last year, they were pretty much a regular family with all the regular stuff. Mom, dad, grown kids, one in college, grandchildren, the regular hard financial times.
This year, though …
It is both unbelievable and heartbreaking what can happen in one year.
The daughter is sick, very sick, with a weird kind of leukemia that has kept her in the hospital for about six of the past seven months.
She’s had to quit college.
The mom is basically homeless, having to give up her apartment because she can’t work full-time because she’s always at the hospital.
The dad is dead, gone, hit by a truck crossing the street.
“I thought she was just depressed because her dad had just died,” said Wanda Laracuente, 45, mother of Nicole Rivera, 19.
But it turned out Rivera, an ROTC graduate from Jupiter High School’s medical magnet program, has leukemia — the kind with an asterisk.
Pre-B-Cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with PH positive.
It’s the PH positive that’s the worst part, the part that’s complicating her recovery.
“I never in a million years would have imagined this,” Wanda says.
Nor this:
Dec. 19, 2006. Nelson Rivera, 46, was in Lakeland helping his sister, and he walked to the store to buy a pack of smokes. He used his cellphone to call the family in Jupiter.
Yes. Everything went well. We got her moved.
I’m headed home.
When he left the store, Nelson Rivera was fatally hit by a Ford F-150 truck as he crossed the street. Police said it was his fault.
By March, Nicole Rivera, attending Florida Career College in Okeechobee so she could become a medical office administrator, was tired all the time.
One night at work, she collapsed — just fell flat on the floor at her job at Winn-Dixie. That was Feb. 3, and it took more than a month to get the diagnosis.
Wanda said they wanted to send them home, label Nicole their “mystery child,” but Laracuente would have none of that.
And leukemia, it was.
There’s been chemo, hospitals stays, no real family income. Too sick to even walk — or go “out in the world,” as she calls it — Nicole’s on the list for a bone-marrow transplant. Recently, she was back at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital on 45th Street in West Palm Beach.
But all this lying around — waiting, wondering, wishing — has given her time to tinker with her goals.
“I was thinking of working for a small clinic,” she said. “But now I’ve decided to change my major to working with kids like me.”
Kids who smile and laugh and have sense enough to cry when circumstances get quite dire. Kids who won’t stop fighting.

Nicole Rivera’s wishes

What she asked for: Money for car payments, car insurance, college debts and an apartment. She also asked for a massage, manicure and pedicure for her mom.

What she received: Nicole and her mom now have an apartment. Money will be applied to college debts, car payments and insurance. Nicole received a $50,000 donation from a foundation.

What she said: “I can’t believe how generous people are and how they’ve reached out in such a loving way,” says Nicole, who remains on a bone-marrow transplant waiting list.

Nominated by: Pediatric Oncology Support Team (POST) Program at Child Life Institute
Address: 5325 Greenwood Ave. No. 301. West Palm Beach, FL 33407
Telephone: (561) 882-6336
Its mission: Nonprofit psychological support team dedicated to helping children with cancer, and their families.