Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
True Olympians: Vickie Mallon, 41, with her son, Will, 10, share a laugh at their home in Santa Clara. Mallon is running with the Olympic torch through Oakland in honor of her son, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 2.
Olympic torch run brings spirit of victory home to former WG woman
Vickie and Tom Mallon deal with diabetes challenge every day
By Kate Carter
Eight years ago, Vickie Mallon spent a tense night racing from hospital to hospital, ultimately leading to her son, Will, being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
Last week she was on a race for Will again, but this time he got to stand by and cheer as she honored him and all others who every day strive for victory and live the Olympic spirit of courage and never give up.
The 41-year-old Mallon, Willow Glen High School graduate of the class of 1978 and now a resident of Santa Clara, carried the Olympic flame Jan. 18 for about a quarter of a mile as it made its way from Greece, through the Bay Area, to its final destination in Salt Lake City, Utah, for this year's Winter Olympics. She was among the 11,500 torchbearers nationwide chosen from a field of more than 200,000 publicly and privately sponsored nominees, selected because they exemplify the inspirational spirit of the Olympic movement.
The torch relay--a pre-games run custom revived in 1936--will travel more than 13,500 miles across the United States in 65 days, with this year being the first time the Olympic torch travels through 46 states. It has traveled from Greece, the home of the Olympic flame, to the site of the 2002 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and is now making its way through hundreds of towns and communities throughout the United States before reaching the site of the next Olympic Games. There, a final torchbearer will carry the torch into Salt Lake's Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony on Feb. 8.
Mallon's journey to the Olympic torch relay began when she noticed her then-2-year-old son unusually asking for more milk at dinner, and then for something to drink after dinner, and then for something else to drink as he went to bed. Mallon, a medical technologist, recognized the behavior as a classic symptom of Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes.
Diabetes is a condition that prevents glucose--what carbohydrates become when broken down in the stomach--from getting from a person's bloodstream to his or her tissue cells. Instead, the glucose remains in the bloodstream as blood sugar. Type 1 diabetics pancreases can't make insulin, the substance that helps glucose move from the bloodstream into body cells. People with this kind of diabetes must receive regular injections of insulin, as well as regulate their diets and activity levels, to keep their blood sugar levels steady.
Mallon gave Will a urine test using a dipstick from work that she had at home. The test showed the sugar content in his blood to be much higher than it should have been; so high, in fact, that she thought something was wrong with the test. She borrowed a co-worker's test kit, which again showed a high blood sugar content.
"It was just like a bad movie," Mallon says.
Then she and her husband, Tom, took Will to El Camino Hospital, which confirmed that his blood sugar was more than 800. Normal blood sugar should be between 80 and 100.
Then they headed to Stanford Hospital, where Will was admitted and spent three days in the hospital while his parents got familiar with the idea of having a son with diabetes.
"You think you're healthy, and then every aspect of your life is regimented," Mallon says to describe the transition. "Suddenly you have to watch your diet, exercise and learn to give shots."
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Carrying the Flame: Former Willow Glen resident Vickie Mallon proudly models the 2002 Olympic track suit that she will wear while running with the Olympic torch through Oakland. Mallon is running in honor of her 10-year-old son, Will, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was just 2.
Will, now 10 and a fourth grader at Laurelwood Elementary School in Santa Clara, is a strong, healthy boy in every way, except for his disease, Mallon says. He plays soccer and baseball and is a big sports fan. He also knows when he needs an injection and is able to give himself shots.
"I consider that really tremendous," Mallon says, adding that Will never complains about the five shots he receives every day.
But she isn't content to just support Will in his disease.
"We would like it to be the way it was before he was diagnosed," Mallon says. "He could just be a boy."
So in 1996 the Mallons became involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Federation, of which Vickie now serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Branch. The family encourages their friends to support them in the Walk to Cure Diabetes every year, last year raising $27,000 themselves. The money raised for the federation is put directly into diabetes research in the hopes of creating more effective treatments and eventually a cure, which Mallon says could be just 10 years away.
The federation is also a support network for families dealing with the disease and works with the Diabetes Society of Santa Clara Valley, located in Willow Glen. Will has attended the society's youth camps since he was 7, Mallon says. He is the true hero of her family's story, she says.
"I wish Will could do it," Mallon says of the torch run, which requires bearers to be at least 18 years of age. "But it's for him, and he knows it's for him."
She says she saw a newspaper announcement for torchbearer nominees last summer.
"The meaning of the flame is victory, and I'm thinking of victory over diabetes. I thought, 'I know somebody who's brave and strong and looking for victory,'" she says and decided to apply to run in Will's honor, as well as in honor of all the other families dealing with Type 1 diabetes.
Mallon says she is purchasing the $335 torch she carried and plans to give it to the research federation to auction off at a fundraiser, maybe autographed by some of this year's Olympians.
"That money's going to buy the equipment that's going to find a cure," she says.
Mallon herself is a fan of the Olympics, she says. She was also a three-letter varsity athlete at Willow Glen High, playing tennis, soccer and badminton. Her sister, Alison Moore, and parents, Rob and Thea Moore, still live in Willow Glen. She has another brother who has moved to North Carolina.
"I'm proud to be doing this," Mallon says. "I think this is a very symbolic thing."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
