East Bay Nurse Supports Children Left Behind By Nurses Who Die Young

Shekhiynah Larks was 15 when she and her younger sister and brother had to leave their home in Oakland and move to Texas to live with her aunt and uncle. Their mother Charm, a nurse and single mom, was sick. In December of 2011, she told her friend and fellow nurse Leslie Silket just how sick.

"When I got that email from her I couldn't help but cry," Silket remembered. "I cried for her, but mostly my tears were for the sons and daughters -- her son, her daughters, and the sons and daughters of all the nurses that have gone way too soon."

Charm Larks had untreatable cancer. Silket realized when Larks died, her children would need help. And that made her realize all the children of nurses who die too young needed help too. So she created the Nurse's Children Foundation to raise college scholarship money for them.

"It's my give-back," Silket explained. "It's what I have to do. I saw my son graduate from San Francisco State at the age of 21 with his bachelor's degree and I cried. I cried about the nurses that aren't here to see what I'm seeing right now."

Shekhiynah Larks is a freshman studying politics at the University of San Francisco, with an eye on her future thanks to the Nurse's Children Foundation.

"Study more," she said when asked about her plans. "So that I can have the right grades for graduate school  because I'm already thinking about graduate school even though this is my freshman year."

So for making sure the children of nurses have a path to college and the future, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Leslie Silket.