Smith: It began with Isaac, Panda and a joke

Back in April, I mentioned the joke that 6-year-old Isaac Smith of Santa Rosa told Giants star Pablo Sandoval when they met in a hospital.

Panda was making a goodwill visit to UCSF. Isaac was there for treatment of the brain tumor he lives with.

The column item noted that the lad’s favorite joke also made it into a book, the sales proceeds from which help parents such as Isaac’s cover the huge costs of medical care.

Well, Sean Parsons read the item, and an idea came to him. Parsons is involved in the foundation created in the name of his late buddy Steve McGirr, a Montgomery High School alum, very good guy and father of two who died of brain cancer in 2008.

The Steve McGirr Charitable Foundation has sponsored a golf tournament the past four years to raise money for grants to families that struggle with brain cancer. Months ago, the group was looking for its first beneficiary.

Parsons reached out to little Isaac’s mother, Lisa. And just the other day, the McGirr Foundation presented its first gift, a check for $2,000, to her and her family.

Lisa said, “The connection with the Steve McGirr Foundation was a real blessing. It is a humbling and awesome experience to be the recipient of that kind of generosity.”

She shares that Isaac is doing quite well, and is undergoing new scans of the tumor that, thank goodness, is not growing. It’s painful to Lisa that words like anesthesia and oncologist have become normal, but she’s grateful he hasn’t lost his joy of life or his sense of humor.

Who remembers Isaac’s joke?

Why did Captain Hook cross the road? To get to the “second-hand” store!

SHARKS AND SHOW BIZ: Jot down a reminder if you’d like to see Sara and Josh Margulis, local creators of the Honeyfund bridal registry, pitch the enterprise to potential investors on the ABC show Shark Tank.

“It was definitely the most important presentation we’ve ever made,” Sara said.

Though a fair amount of media interest has flowed already to Honeyfund, an online service that allows donors to finance pieces of the newlyweds’ honeymoon, Sara notes, “This is our first prime-time experience.”

She and Josh, who married in 2005 and used guests’ donations to travel to Fiji, headed to L.A. some time ago to film the episode. But they’re forbidden by ABC to say how their Honeyfund pitch flew with the panel of investors.

Sara violated no contract by saying that “being part of the magic of Hollywood” was pretty sweet.

The episode airs at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24.

PAULINE GARRETT. If reading that name stirs fond old memories, you probably were one of the 300-plus preschoolers who attended Little People’s Day Care in Petaluma between 1954 and 1994.

Pauline ran the place until she turned 74. She’s 94 now. And this Saturday, she’ll be the star of a Little People’s reunion that her family will host at the Doubletree Hotel in Rohnert Park.

If you were at Pauline’s day care or took your kids there, and you’d like to attend the get-together, drop a note to Pauline’s daughter, Dorothea, at dgarrett@frontiernet.net.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.