Inside every Chemo Comfort Bag is a little piece of the memory of Jerry “Herk” Hertkorn. This past year, his daughter, Fox Chase Cancer Center nurse practitioner Caryn Vadseth, MSN, CRNP , AGPCNP-BC, OCN, turned the group she created in his memory, Herk’s Heroes, into an official 501(c)3 charitable organization with the mission to provide comfort and support to cancer patients.
The Chemo Comfort Bag Project—the group’s signature effort—returned in 2023, after a year’s hiatus, to Fox Chase Cancer Center, Fox Chase – East Norriton, Temple University Hospital – Main Campus, and new this year, Temple University Hospital – Northeastern Campus. With a $20 sponsorship per bag, donors covered the cost of the contents, which included eye masks, blankets, puzzle books, and many other comfort items to help put infusion patients at ease during their visits. Volunteers distributed the bags to patients.
“It is a small but meaningful act to hand someone a bag full of goodies and say ‘Someone was thinking of you today,’” Vadseth said. “It often catches them off-guard – some cry and some are just bewildered – but overall, I think it brings everyone some joy.”
An Overnight Success 10 Years in the Making
Herk’s Heroes started as a fundraising team for a lung cancer walk the November after Jerry Hertkorn’s death from the disease in June of 2012. After a few years of growing the team, a colleague convinced Vadseth, then an oncology nurse at Fox Chase, to consider putting her efforts toward helping patients at the cancer center.
According to Vadseth, that suggestion sparked a memory that would set Herk’s Heroes on the path toward becoming a charitable organization in its own right.
“Each week when he visited the infusion room at Fox Chase, a volunteer offered my dad a piece of candy from a basket,” Vadseth said. “It was a small act that really made what he was going through much more bearable.”
In that spirit, Herk’s Heroes began a candy drive, collecting leftover Halloween candy. Each year in November, Vadseth would gather volunteers to assemble candy bags to hand out in the infusion room. The effort has grown each year, but this last year blew away all their expectations with an influx of candy – a ton of candy, in fact... literally.
“It turns out that Girl Scout troops had begun collecting Halloween candy each year to send to American service members overseas,” Vadseth explained. “Due to rising shipping costs, the charity that ran the effort refused donations, so it feels like every Girl Scout troop in the region gave us their candy this year. We had never seen so much candy before.”
In fact, Vadseth was able to use a remainder of the 4,000 bags they filled from the Halloween donations in this year’s Chemo Comfort Bag production.
Begun in 2017, the Chemo Comfort Bag was Herk’s Heroes’ next big step. The idea, as Vadseth explains, expands on the candy drive concept and seeks to provide visitors to the infusion room with items that would make their time a little more pleasant.
The project began as a word-of-mouth effort, with Vadseth looking for people to sponsor Chemo Comfort Bags. For $25, Herk’s Heroes could fill a bag with a variety of small items, from lip balm to slippers and a warm compress. In their first year, Herk’s Heroes made 154 bags available to patients in the Fox Chase infusion room.
“Like with the candy drive, we would set up a little assembly line in the Fox Chase cafeteria
to put the bags together after hours,” Vadseth said. “I’m overwhelmed by the support my
friends and colleagues offer, but I think that’s typical of our community.”
By 2020, they were able to double their efforts and supply 300 bags to infusion rooms across Temple University Health System. Over the four-year span, they delivered more than 750 Chemo Comfort Bags.
“We really pushed hard in 2020, since we knew that patients couldn’t have a family member with them in the infusion room due to the pandemic,” Vadseth said. “We made the extra effort to expand the delivery of Chemo Comfort Bags.”
A New Era for Herk’s Heroes
In 2021, however, Herk’s Heroes needed to take a little break. That year, Caryn Vadseth finished up her coursework to become a nurse practitioner and embarked on a new career as part of medical oncology at Temple University Hospital – Main Campus. Still part of the Fox Chase team, her role provided her a broader perspective on the role Herk’s Heroes might play in the lives of cancer patients.
“In 2022, we decided to turn Herk’s Heroes into an official 501(c)3 charity, which will help us to do more in our mission to support and comfort cancer patients,” Vadseth said.
For example, Vadseth began seeking in-kind donations to procure Chemo Comfort Bag items in bulk, which allowed Herk’s Heroes to bring down the cost of individual sponsorships to $20, despite inflation.
While the Chemo Comfort Bags will continue to be Herk’s Heroes’ main effort, Vadseth believes the charitable tax status will allow them to do more good for more people.
“Working at Temple University Hospital has really opened my eyes to the struggles of patients and their families,” Vadseth said. “I can see expanding the kind of comfort Herk’s Heroes provides to address things like transportation or even food insecurity that many people need to deal with while they are undergoing their cancer treatment.”
To learn more about how you can get involved in supporting Herk’s Heroes, please contact Caryn Vadseth via email.
Top Photo: Fox Chase nurse practitioner Caryn Vadseth, MSN, CRNP , AGPCNP-BC, OCN—the founder of Herk's Heroes—with her husband, Fox Chase nurse John Vadseth, RN, BSN, OCN