After being diagnosed with leukemia last year, Garrett Rodriguez had to spend most of his spring, summer and fall at a Denver hospital.

Between April and November 2025, the Powell preteen and his parents were generally tied to Denver Children’s Hospital as he underwent treatment for the cancer.

The care was successful, as 12-year-old Garrett just started his seventh grade year at Powell Middle School.

“He’s doing well now,” Garrett’s mother, Pernille Rodriguez, said at last week’s Powell City Council meeting, “but definitely because of the help of Jason’s Friends.”

The Jason’s Friends Foundation is a Casper-based nonprofit that provides support to families who’ve had the misfortune of having a child diagnosed with cancer or brain or spinal cord tumors. The organization was formed about 30 years ago in memory of Jason Eades, a 9-year-old Casper boy who died from a brain stem tumor in 1995.

Jason’s Friends helps families pay for things like travel expenses and household bills; it aims to prevent families from falling into a financial crisis as a result of their child’s diagnosis and treatment.

“I didn’t know they existed until you get confronted with this kind of disease,” Pernille said. “And we’re forever grateful that we were able to keep our house, keep our jobs and still be there for our son.”

She and Garrett’s father, Facundo, alternated stints in Denver throughout last year.

“Trying to keep a job down is hard when you have to be there 24/7,” Pernille recalled. She told the council the family couldn’t have gotten through the ordeal without Jason’s Friends.

At the Sept. 21 meeting, the council members voted unanimously to proclaim September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. The proclamation encourages Powell citizens “to help raise awareness for pediatric cancer and to support programs such as Jason’s Friends Foundation that give financial and emotional assistance to the victims and their families.”

Councilman Zane Logan said the issue is near and dear to his heart. Logan said his son was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma — another type of blood cancer — in 1995, at the age of 12.

Logan’s son also received successful treatment in Denver; he’s now 43 and works as a mechanical engineer.

But Logan recalled the challenges of that time: Beyond the expense of treating the disease, “there’s enough emotional burden for everybody,” he said.

“A program like this [Jason’s Friends] would have certainly been great for just the support as well as for the financial stuff,” Logan said.

Jason’s Friends says it's currently supporting about 185 Wyoming families. That includes 15 new families this year, and 31 last year.

“This sharp increase is a sobering reminder of the ongoing need in Wyoming,” the proclamation says. It adds that roughly 75 Wyoming children have died from cancer or brain or spinal cord tumors over the last three decades.

The nonprofit raises money through an annual “Bowl for Jason’s Friends” fundraiser; it reported receiving over $510,000 this year through bowling events in Casper, Gillette and Cheyenne.

Over the past 30 years, Jason’s Friends says it has provided more than $9.5 million worth of financial assistance to Wyoming families. 

For more information, visit jasonsfriends.org.