Paige O'Shaughnessy makes soft, warm hats to ease hard, cold times

A Wading River teen whose grandmother died from cancer has found a creative way to give courage to others undergoing treatment.

Paige O’Shaughnessy, a senior at Shoreham-Wading River High School, recently crafted 125 hats — which she calls “courage caps” — out of dozens of donated T-shirts she collected from family and local organizations including New York Cancer & Blood Specialists. The completed caps were donated to the treatment center and later distributed to its patients, she said.

Paige, a member of Girl Scout Troop 900, pursued the project as part of her Gold Award, the highest achievement in the Girl Scouts of the USA. She was also honored for her efforts this summer with a Distinguished Youth Award from the Suffolk County Legislature.

“I was inspired by my grandmother, who had ovarian cancer,” Paige, 17, said of Geraldine Ulrich, who died in 2019. “She had to go through chemotherapy and lost all of her hair. She was able to get wigs, but a lot of people in the radiation center with her didn’t have insurance to cover the wigs and would have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket.”

To create the caps, Paige said she cut up the T-shirts and then sewed them after watching videos that described how to transform a shirt into a hat on YouTube. One T-shirt provided enough material to create two courage caps as well as small fabric flowers that she attached to the hats with pins for decorative purposes, she said.

Paige also taught a group of younger Girl Scouts how to make the caps, and they donated an additional 15 to New York Cancer & Blood Specialists, she said.

“The coolest part was dropping them off at the center, because I put them in this little basket so it was easier to carry and drop off to them,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Just seeing them together with all the colors and all the different designs was a really good feeling.”

In addition to boosting the courage of cancer patients, the caps provide much-needed warmth since many chemotherapy facilities can be “really, really cold,” Paige said.

Tina Toulon, executive director of the New York Cancer Foundation, praised the crafty teen for creating the “beautiful caps.” New York Cancer & Blood Specialists is a supporter of the foundation, Toulon said.

“When Paige approached our New York Cancer Foundation with the idea for this amazing project, we were thrilled to say yes,” Toulon said. “Paige really put her heart and soul into this project. She truly is a hero, helping patients she has never met in honor of her loved one.”

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.