It’s not every day in Columbia that grown-ups pull firetrucks on a downtown street dressed as Spiderman or wearing pink dresses.  

But for Grainne and Clay Owen, that’s become a yearly tradition to raise money for the nonprofit organization they founded called “Curing Kids Cancer.” 

The Owens started raising money in 2004 after losing one of their sons, Killian, to leukemia, when he was 9. Their efforts officially became a 501(c)(3) in 2005 to help fund research to cure pediatric cancers. 

“It really started way before that, because our little boy, Killian, one of our twins, was diagnosed with leukemia in 1999,” Grainne Owen said. “We went almost all the way through his treatment and relapsed six months before he was due to finish. And by that point, they said that we had to go through a bone marrow transplant.” 

One hundred days post-transplant is the magic number. That’s when it’s considered a success. Unfortunately, at 90 days, leukemia cells came back, and the doctors told his parents there was nothing they could do.  

Grainne Owen refused to give up and came across a new type of therapy called targeted therapy. The Food and Drug Administration hadn’t approved it yet, so they had to get special permission. It turned out that Killian was the perfect patient to try the drug.  

“We thought this was going to be our miracle,” Grainne Owen said. “We got (to the hospital) and unfortunately, because Killian was the first child in the world to try this drug, the FDA limited the dose that the doctors were allowed to give him. He would have actually needed twice the dose for it to really be effective.” 

Then doctors told the Owens a second generation of the drug was in the lab and would be up to 11 times more effective for Killian. 

“I said, great, give it to him,” Grainne Owen said. “But then he said, ‘We can’t. We don’t have the money to get it out the lab and into treatment.’ At that point, I remember thinking, why on earth is he telling us about something that could save our child’s life, but he can’t have it. Knowing that was what made me want to raise money, because we had to take Killian home, and we lost him.” 

About a year later, Grainne Owen was with her three other children. She comforted them by telling them Killian wasn’t suffering any more and that God was looking over him better than they ever could. But she began thinking again about the drug that was stuck in the lab. 

“I knew with absolute conviction that I could do something to stop this from happening to other kids,” Grainne Owen said. “That’s what he would have wanted me to do. So, we started raising money and since 2005, we have raised over $34 million for research. So I think we’ve got our guardian angel watching over us.” 

The $34 million has been raised in various ways, including through golf tournaments, 5-K runs and firetruck pulls held across the country. The charity follows the Owen family, which has lived in several spots around the globe because of Clay’s journalism and corporate communications careers. One stop led to him meeting Grainne, who’s Irish. The most recent move brought the family to Columbia, where Clay teaches in the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. 

Grainne Owen at one point wanted to find a new way of fundraising – something unique – which is how the firetruck pulls were born. 

“Each team that pulled the firetruck would pull on behalf of a child who had cancer,” Grainne Owen said. “Could be a child in treatment, a survivor or in memory of a child. That’s what makes it so special because each team dresses up in the child’s favorite thing. It’s lovely if the child can meet their team and know that they’re literally pulling for them.” 

This year, teams showed up dressed as dalmatians, Spider-Man, pharmacists, Elmo, crayons and wearing pink dresses. 

The Owens offer prizes for the fastest team that pulls the truck over 50 feet, the highest fundraising team and the best dressed team. 

The children choose who is the best dressed, which Grainne Owen said is always funny because they always want to vote for their own team. 

The event raised $50,000 this year with 26 teams, and it’s headed toward a $5 million endowment split between Prisma Health Children’s Hospital in Columbia, USC’s School of Pharmacy and USC’s School of Medicine. The three-way partnership is the first of its kind in the state. 

“How do you bring together the hospital, where kids are treated, and the university to create new treatments?” Clay Owen said. “So, we’re working with the College of Pharmacy, the med school and Prisma Health to create a new lab so they can look at tissue samples. They can examine them, and hopefully this will lead to new treatments. It’s a new collaborative venture between these three entities, which has never been done here in Columbia but has been done in other major cities. We want to put Columbia on the forefront of research by sponsoring this.” 

Michael Wyatt, chair of the Department of Drug Discovery & Biomedical Sciences at the College of Pharmacy, said the project means so much as they’re doing everything they can to make a difference in children’s lives right here in Columbia.

“This is an amazing charity,” Wyatt said. “They do so much at the local, community level. It’s one thing to be a big national charity and to raise money generally. But this money comes right here and helps people right here. That’s why I love it so much.” 

The next firetruck pull will take place in Dallas, Texas, on April 25, with another following in Canton, Georgia, in May.

“I just love the energy, and this year it was off the charts,” Clay Owen said.  “It’s the families who are coming there and supporting the kids. It’s that energy between the teams who are supporting the kids and the kids themselves who are just so inspiring. I feed off that energy, and I just love it.”