‘Such a wonderful kid’: GoFundMe raising scholarship cash in memory of Terry Fox’s Karin Khuong

By various accounts, Khuong disliked the spotlight her cancer put on her. She didn’t want that focus. The team portion of basketball was one of her favourite parts of the sport. She wasn’t comfortable with it all being about her, and especially not in the cancer way.

Khuong was good with it being about other people. She was good with Chambers having that report as a keepsake, good with him knowing that the conversation that they had years earlier had meant so much to her.

Khuong probably wouldn’t love that there’s a GoFundMe page up this week with her name front and centre. She’d be keen on it being about bringing in scholarship money for others. The hope is to raise $20,000 so that $2,000 a year can be given out to student-athletes for a 10-year span.

As of Wednesday afternoon, there had been over $10,000 donated in its first five days.

Karin Khuong leans forward and laughs on the bench during the B.C. high school girls basketball provincial championships in February. Photo by Nick Bondi

“Karin’s goal was to play basketball at Simon Fraser, and with her determination, we know she would have achieved it,” Khuong’s parents Jen and Anthony say on the GoFundMe page. “Now she is going to assist other students chasing their dreams.”

In September 2018, Khuong was diagnosed with Stage 4 rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in soft tissue and is most often found in children. There were various treatments, including a stem-cell transplant. She was doing well enough that her doctors signed off on a family trip to Bali, but she was informed in January that the cancer was back.

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