Oak Forest Taps Pub Cares for Kids with Cancer Event Celebrating the Life of Alyssa Marie Kent

Taps Pub in Oak Forest is giving to children and teens fighting cancer. The bar is sponsoring Taps Cares for Kids with Cancer event on Saturday, October 12, 2013. No cover, live music from members of Droptop, Rearview Mirror and The Kent Brothers. Raffles, split-the-pot and free food will take place from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. at 15427 S. Cicero Ave., Oak Forest. All proceeds will benefit the Orland Park-based Pediatric Oncology Treasure Chest Foundation (POTCF), a non-profit organization that provides comfort and distraction from painful procedures to children and teens diagnosed with cancer by providing a toy, gift or gift card in 45 hospitals nationwide.

Taps Pub is a friendly, local Oak Forest bar. The bar often hosts benefits to help raise money for local charities.

The Treasure Chest Foundation currently serves more than 8,600 children and teens each month who are battling cancer at 45 treatment centers in 16 states across the nation. Nowhere else in the nation does such a program exist. CEO Colleen Kisel founded the organization in 1996 after her then seven-year-old son Martin had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1993. Colleen discovered that giving her son a toy after each procedure provided a calming distraction from his pain, noting that when children are diagnosed with cancer their world soon becomes filled with doctors, nurses, chemotherapy drugs, surgeries and seemingly endless painful procedures. Martin celebrated his 20th anniversary of remission from the disease earlier this year.

For more information about the upcoming Taps Cares for Kids with Cancer Benefit call Taps Pub at 708-535-6374. If you would like further information about the Treasure Chest Foundation, please contact Colleen Kisel at 708-687-TOYS (8697) or visit the Foundation’s web site at www.treasurechest.org.