Baylor nursing alumni help hospitalized children feel like superheroes

DALLAS— Every month, people of all ages meet at Union Coffee House in Dallas to cut, sew and decorate child-sized superhero capes.

Capes 4 Kids, a Dallas-based nonprofit, organizes these “cape factories” to create and deliver capes to hospital-bound children across the Dallas/Fort Worth area in hopes of encouraging them to become “superheroes” fighting their diseases. 

Cody Reynolds, a founding member of the Capes 4 Kids nonprofit, dresses up as Coffee Man to deliver capes to hospitalized children.
Giving back

Two students at the Baylor University Louise Herrington School of Nursing—Jordan Loetscher and Cody Reynolds—started Capes 4 Kids in 2013. Along with the rest of the student leadership team, they were charged with deciding what to do for their senior class “give-back” project. Instead of raising funds for an item to donate to the school, as students had done in the past, the team decided to create and deliver superhero capes to children battling serious illnesses.

“Especially during nursing school, it was very evident to us that the process of healing is not just a physical process,” Loetscher said. “In order to get well, there’s not just your physical health. There’s your emotional health, your psychological health, your spiritual health. And it became so evident in the hospital that the people who were in better moods and felt hope and felt love were the ones that were more likely to get better faster.

“We wanted to tie into that, and tie into it in one of the most vulnerable groups for that, which is young children and children in general.”

Scheduled sewing days

Loetscher and Reynolds launched the organization on the first day of their senior year of nursing school. They created costumes and a promotional video over the summer and held “sewing days” once a week throughout the semester in the school’s lunch area. Students and professors donated time and money, Loetscher said, and by the end of the semester they had 47 capes to give to children.

The Capes 4 Kids nonprofit picked up momentum after their graduation, Loetscher said, when they partnered with Union Coffee House in Dallas.

Volunteers at the “cape factories” trace, cut, sew and decorate the capes. Capes are given to hospital-bound children in hopes of encouraging them to become superheroes fighting their diseases.
Cape factories

The nonprofit coffee shop connected Capes 4 Kids with various resources such as fundraisers and the local sewing guild. Union also offered its space for use as the “cape factory,” where volunteers could meet to design and sew capes.

“We now have cape factories once a month,” Loetscher said. “We have between 40 and 100 people showing up every month to sew capes, and we usually make about 40 to 75 capes.”

Capes 4 Kids accepts volunteers of all ages. From tracing patterns, to cutting material, to sewing designs, there is a job for everyone at the cape factories.

“So long as a child is old enough to be able to trace, they are old enough to help out at the cape factory,” Loetscher said.

Mega-factory

Each month, Capes 4 Kids holds “cape factories” at Union Coffee House in Dallas where volunteers can help make superhero capes and teddy bears for hospitalized children.Each year, Capes 4 Kids also hosts one “mega-factory” at a larger location.

“Our mega-factory this year will be in November in Fair Park, and we’re expecting somewhere between 200 and 250 people,” Loetscher said. At last year’s mega-factory, volunteers made 80 capes.

Material left over from the capes is used to make teddy bears the children at hospitals can decorate and stuff themselves. The bears are given their own miniature capes and become the children’s “superhero sidekick bears.”

‘You are a superhero, and here’s your cape to prove it’

Capes 4 Kids volunteers dressed as superheroes visit hospitals to deliver the capes and teddy bears to the children. They often deliver to children in the hospital playrooms, Loetscher said, but also are sure to visit the children who cannot leave their rooms.

Jordan Loetscher, who helped found Capes 4 Kids, dresses up as Bow and Arrow Girl to deliver superhero capes and superhero sidekick teddy bears to children in the hospital.“Capes 4 Kids strives to take care of their psychological and emotional well-being by giving them a little push and saying: ‘Hey, you are a superhero battling this super villain that is whatever disease process you are going through, and we’re here for you. And not only that—you are awesome, you are a superhero, and here’s your cape to prove it,’” Loetscher said.

When delivering to the children, the volunteers often give capes and bears to the children’s siblings as well, Loetscher said.

“Siblings go through just as much when their brother or sister is really sick,” she said. “They just experience it in a different way.”

Loetscher described a time when she and Reynolds, disguised as “Bow and Arrow Girl” and “Coffee Man,” visited a sick child and her younger sister.

“The moment they saw us, they instantly broke out in smiles and became very chatty and talkative,” Loetscher said. “They asked us who we were and why superheroes were coming to visit. We talked with them, helped decorate their sidekick bears and gave them their capes. … It was so great to see the immediate impact our capes had for these little girls’ moods.”