Sometimes there’s a compelling and profound sense of humility in the quiet advocate for children. CHOC Children’s came to understand this when it received a $30 million estate gift— the largest gift in the hospital’s history—from a private, compassionate philanthropist whose ideals matched CHOC’s mission to improve the lives of children locally, nationally, and globally for generations to come.

The gentleman was former investment banker Robert L. Tidwell, who lived modestly in Garden Grove, California, and gave extraordinarily to drive the growth of a children’s hospital. With his transformative gift, CHOC is now more than 80 percent of the way toward meeting the goal of its $125 million “Change CHOC, Change the World” campaign, a major fundraising effort that will help CHOC evolve from a regional pediatric care center into one of the nation's leading children’s hospitals.

Mr. Tidwell’s gift will be balanced between helping build the new...
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Building the Tower from the Inside Out Once the patient-care tower is finished, how do you bring it to life? CHOC Children’s new patient-care tower strikes an impressive form with its massive footprint and wonderfully playful color scheme. The physical presence of the building, however, is only half the story. The building will spring to life by what gets put into it. click here for story...

CHOC Children’s Patient-Care Tower on Target to Open Spring 2013 Construction of CHOC Children's new sevenstory hospital tower, designed to provide a flexible platform to serve this region now and into the future, stands more than 70 percent complete. The state-of-the-art facility enables CHOC to take its place among our nation’s premier children’s hospitals with the ability to advance the research and practice of pediatric medicine. When officially open in April 2013, the tower will add 425,000 square feet and up to 142 additional inpatient beds in future phases as part of an effort to boost the capacity and services of the top twenty busiest children’s hospital in the U.S. The tower will also feature dedicated pediatric surgery suites, radiology and laboratory facilities, and a new emergency center. The new to... click here for story...

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	Illness Brings Together Two Strong Voices in Support of CHOC “CHOC is a community of good people, and they’re open to anyone and everyone. The firstclass treatment here is amazing. Everyone is nice and very helpful,” says Tommaso “Tommy” Conforti, CHOC Children’s first Campaign Child Ambassador.
	Top Doctors Come to CHOC to Do Revolutionary Work Experts on children’s hospitals understand a simple truth: The addition of a single subspecialty physician can make all the difference in the lives of sick children by filling critical gaps in a hospital’s capabilities.
	People Make Greatness Happen Dr. Mustafa Kabeer, a pediatric surgeon at CHOC Children’s, works eighty to eighty-five hours per week and performs nearly 600 operations a year. Dr. Michael Muhonen, CHOC’s director of Neurosurgery, rarely has a week that doesn’t include multiple emergency brain surgeries. Dr. Antoine Khoury, chief of Pediatric Urology, spends twelve-hour days at CHOC, plus teaches at the UC Irvine School of Medicine, and directs vital research in the evenings and on weekends. For these doctors and many others, however, it's not a competition; it's a calling, a responsibility and a duty to keep Orange County’s children as safe and healthy as possible.