Kathryn Sears
On November 8, the annual Aristrong Car Show, Concert, and Kickball Tournament was hosted on Colton High School’s athletic fields. The event was organized by The Aristrong Foundation, an organization founded in memory of Arianna “Ari” Villalobos to support families in need.
The event began seven years ago, after the Villalobos family lost their 15-year-old daughter “Ari” to stage 4 Glioblastoma Brain Cancer. Their Foundation is meant to not only spread awareness for children with cancer, but also raise funds for pediatric cancer research, aligning with its slogan, “Bringing Hope And Healing to Hurting Hearts.”
Alex Villalobos, Ari’s uncle, said, “It’s about honoring the legacy and the wishes Ari had, but also building community and helping people and making everybody aware that we have all these great resources to offer to them.”
Near the event entrance, food vendors like Dutch Bros joined a raffle ticket booth and blood donation service Lifestream to provide guests with a wide range of activities.
One of the attendees and raffle winners, Elaine Cabrera said, “I have family that comes here and they come every year, and I have breast cancer, so I want to support children who go through similar experiences. I’m the first in my family to have cancer so it has been a struggle for my family.”
Since the start of the Aristrong event, its impact in Colton has grown significantly, not just for the attendees, but for the people participating in the event as well.
Executive Director of the Childhood Cancer Foundation of Southern California, Stephanie Avila, ran a booth to grow the support for childhood cancer, she said, “You see pink and breast cancer awareness everywhere, but it’s nice for communities to see the community back childhood cancer.”
Avila had a brother and sister that were diagnosed with cancer both at young ages, so for Avila, there were clear effects on her family. She said, “I could see the impact of my parents not being as involved in our lives, like we had sitters, we had family that was there, but the priority was getting my sister back to being healthy. So I saw how it affected the family financially.”
Through attending the Childhood Cancer Foundation of Southern California’s events due to her siblings, Avila worked her way up to Executive Director to highlight the importance of their foundation. “I came on staff because I knew how it had impacted my life, and I wanted to do the same for other families.”
The Aristrong Foundation also supports families through its Aristrong Memorial Scholarship where they pick students in the Colton Joint Unified School District that represent the “spirit of the Aristrong Foundation.” This year’s winners were Sebastian Tabares and Danaya Figueroa.
Alex Villalobos said, “We try to do scholarships for a student at Colton and Grand Terrace high every year, and that was started a few years ago. Ari was on path to attend school in Grand Terrace. So it was just really, really important to us. If we’re gonna have this, we should help as many people as we can in our community.”
As the Aristrong Foundation continues to grow, so does the community involvement, with about 150 cars in attendance for the Carshow while the kickball tournament also had 12 participating teams, the winners being Colton High’s Football team, and live performances by Breaking Free, Angel Baby, and more.
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