One colleague has a special nickname for Riley Ruiz Lamora, B.S.N., R.N., a City of Hope nurse working in pediatric oncology.
“I call her Smiley Riley,” said Michael Ilagan, R.N. He works with Lamora in that highly challenging environment, taking care of children and young adults with cancer. “She’s one of the smiliest people on the floor. Everybody loves the energy she brings.”
And make no mistake, we’re not talking Pollyanna, everything-is-hunky-dory energy. Ilagan says there’s a lot behind that smile.
“When I define nursing, I think of a patient advocate,” he said. “Riley embodies that. She is the voice for the patient in the room” — communicating the patient’s needs to doctors, educating the family — and “guiding them through their oncology journey, advocating for the patient’s life, for their needs, for their best options.
“We need more nurses like that.”
Award-Worthy Pediatric Cancer Care
Lamora’s achievements were recently recognized by the Simms/Mann Family Foundation, which awarded her and several other City of Hope nurses a $10,000 “Off the Chart” gift, “for their leadership, ingenuity and expertise in caring for their fellow humans and future generations.”
Lamora is proud of the award but will say little about it. Rather self-effacing, she tends to accept compliments with an embarrassed, “Oh, stop!”
Others, though, have plenty to say. They talk about the extra steps she takes. Like anonymously leaving little gifts for her small patients. Or when a 3-year-old stem cell transplant patient could not be discharged until the child was able to safely and reliably swallow pills at home. Lamora turned pill-swallowing into a fun, competitive game, letting the patient pick a toy from the toy room each time a pill went down. The child quickly mastered the skill.
Managing the Highs and Lows of the Role
For the City of Hope Pediatric Halloween Parade last year, Lamora reached out to the Mattel toy company, which donated hundreds of Barbies and Hot Wheels for the kids. She got her father-in-law to build a special “Barbie Box” for the festivities. “Seeing the kids’ faces light up was very special,” she said.
She even stepped in to enable a declining patient’s transition to hospice care, which the family wanted. Riley brought all the parties together so everyone could understand that hospice was now the best path.
And that, she says, is one of the toughest parts of the job.
“When patients get bad news, that the plan has changed from cure to comfort, when you see their minds turning — that’s very hard,” she said, her voice trailing off, the emotion evident.
“I know the pain that comes with that.”
Yes, she does.
She was in grade school, growing up in Chino Hills, California, when a family friend named Karla Rosen was diagnosed with brain cancer and ultimately passed away. A few years later, it happened again, this time to a classmate, Cameron Mitchell. Lamora’s parents remember her accompanying Cameron to one of his treatment sessions, exhibiting a level of compassion and empathy not that common in someone so young.
“She’s an old soul, wise beyond her years,” said her father Aaron Ruiz, a police officer in nearby Whittier, California. Ruiz and his wife Tami, a flight attendant, raised Lamora and her younger brother Nicholas with deep faith and a “take action” mentality, repeatedly telling them both, “Don’t sit on the sidelines.”
Lamora took it to heart. When Karla’s mother created the Let It Be Foundation, Lamora volunteered from the start and stayed for many years, helping to support children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. “It was my first introduction to pediatric oncology,” she recalled. “I knew I wanted to do something related.”
That “something related” crystallized later on, when her grandfather battled prostate cancer. He would go to City of Hope® for treatment, and Lamora would accompany him. “I saw all the nurses with him,” she said, and it helped her make a decision. “By my senior year, I was thinking seriously about nursing.”
So seriously, in fact, that other, possibly more lucrative options simply fell away. Always athletic, Lamora excelled at soccer and could have leveraged her skills into a full athletic college scholarship. But she doubted she could handle nursing and soccer together. So she walked away from the soccer field — and the potential dollars — and focused on finding the best nursing program, eventually enrolling in California Baptist University.
In 2019, her last year of nursing school, Lamora came to City of Hope to work as a patient care assistant, seeing up close what nurses do and getting familiar with the environment. Eleven months later, she was a full-fledged R.N. on the pediatric hematology/oncology unit.
“I had never worked in a hospital before,” she recalled. “I didn’t know how my heart would handle it. But I loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it. I loved the patients: their strength, their resilience.”
Seeing that resilience in action, she says, is a powerful motivator.
“There are many hard days. But there are also many days to celebrate,” she said. “All cancer fighters and survivors are warriors. To see one complete their treatment and get to ring that [end of treatment] bell — hearing that bell is just incredible. And everybody knows I’ll be the one crying at that moment.”
Cancer Strikes at Home
She has witnessed — and practiced — resilience in her family life. Married three years to William Lamora, a first-grade public school teacher, Lamora had to step up and cope when Will was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
“I’m pretty much a child,” he said, smiling. “She knew everything [about my condition] and she was a huge advocate for me, just like she’s a huge advocate for her patients. She’s all about what’s best for the patient — including me! I’m blessed to have her, and I wouldn’t be here without her.”
Lamora flips the story a bit.
“I was an emotional wreck,” she recalled. “Will was a rock. He did his chemo with a smile on his face. He was more concerned about how I was feeling.” The chemo worked — Will has been cancer-free for more than a year.
Her family marvels at her “all-in” approach, getting close to patients, maintaining those bonds long after treatment ends, enjoying the happy milestones and sharing the grief when bad news comes. “I wonder how she does it,” her father said. “She doesn’t like to make a big deal about herself. But people come up to us and say, ‘Your daughter is amazing!’ So we like to brag on her.”
Lamora brags on her co-workers.
“There’s not a single person at City of Hope who you’re not going to love,” she says. “It’s such a special group of compassionate doctors, nurses, patient care assistants, and the list goes on. I first saw it when my grandfather was there. Everyone greets you with a smile.”
She plans to keep giving and receiving those smiles for a long time.
“Ten years from now, I think I’ll be right where I am now, in pediatric oncology. I’ll always have a passion for it.”