News about Dominic Roque

My family and I are long time Huntington Beach residents. My son Dominic Roque, aged 7, recently passed away from a rare Autoimmune disease called Takayasu Arteritis, which caused a huge problem with his heart, later causing cardiac failure. He attended Village View elementary in HB, his older brother is at Marina High in HB.



Dominic was diagnosed with Takauasu Ateritis when he was 2 months old. It is an extremely rare disease, affecting 1-2 in a million people, and usually diagnosed in Asian women aged around 30. We were told that there was only one other baby who had ever been diagnosed with this disease, and this baby died right after being diagnosed at 9 months of age. My son was treated at CHLA and CHOC with chemotherapy, steroids and heart medication, and led a full life. Dom was later diagnosed with high functioning autism at age 3. He received lots of therapy and special education services throughout his life from RCOC, OVSD and Cornerstone therapy center for his developmental delays from his illness and for his autism.



At age 7, he was transferred from a special education pgm at Golden View, to our home school of Village View, but he only attended Village View for 2 days before he got sick needed to go into the hospital. On September 12 2009, he was admitted to CHOC thru the ER dept, and spent a week in the CV-IUC (cardiovascular ICU). Dominic was doing quite well, before a sudden and unexpected cardiac event occurred, and he couldn’t be revived.



This is just a short version of my son’s very full and wonderful life. We are grief stricken, but we need to do something that makes a difference in memory of Dominic. We would like to give some attention to his disease, and other autoimmune diseases (like Lupus) which are killing our children (and adults) and not getting nearly enough funding to find reasonable treatment or a cure. I have started a collection to raise funds for research for the Rheumatology Dept at CHLA, in order to help them move forward with their work in providing hope and helping families. So far, we have raised almost $1000.00.



Please let me know if you’d like more information on our family’s tragedy and about our adorable little boy Dom.



Kind regards, Kerrie Roque, Dominic’s mother.