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After putting away the sprint car late Saturday night, we had some fun at the kart races on Sunday up in Lakeport. My nephew, Chance had a chain come off in the feature while Marty held on to a 4th place finish on a track that didn’t take as much rubber as he had hoped. Cavin made some beautiful moves around the top to win his 250 heat race, and Cale….well Cale is always happy just hanging out with his pals at the track, and he brought home a 5th place trophy driving the Mach 5.

The highlight of our day was meeting 10 year old, David Drew. His Father, Pat said that David is an avid race fan and has been laying down a lot of laps at Driven Raceway, the indoor go-kart track in Rohnert Park. It sounds like the folks at Driven Raceway have been extremely nice to David and we can understand why. The kid is pretty inspiring. Young David is in his second battle with cancer. He was diagnosed when only 18 months old and finally knocked it into remission when he was 6. Four years later it’s back and David is ready to fight once again.

Former Calistoga sprint car driver, Augie Grube had told me about David and his love for racing, so we invited him and his father to the races to hang out and have some fun. Even though my younger son, Cale did his best to get David to go play on the dirt piles, he wasn’t about to miss a minute of the action. The folks at the track were awesome. David did a little flagging during qualifying and hung out with me up in the booth while I called the main events. After the racing was all over we unloaded a kart for David to take some laps in. We’ve given a bunch of kids their first taste of karting over the years and some of them have backed out once they started suiting up and strapping in. It can be pretty intimidating for a little kid to be crammed into a kart so tight that he can hardly turn his head. It didn’t help when the guy behind us fired up his motor and reved it up loud and the guy out on the track smacked the wall right in plain view. It was warm out and David started getting a little nervous so I backed away and gave him some space while his dad helped get his glasses on him through the helmet. I listened to his dad say “You’re not watching from the stands now son. You’re in the race car and I know you can do this”. That was about all it took. After the first 10 laps we stopped him and asked if he was getting tired. According to dad, he’s about 8 pounds underweight and understandably gets tired pretty quick, but there was no way that kid was going to tell you he was tired. As the sun began to set he had turned about 40 laps, practiced locking up the brakes and spinning to avoid an accident and then took the checkered flag and drove it into the infield to do some brodies (he liked doing brodies).

I’m not sure who enjoyed the afternoon more, David and his father, or us? He must’ve thanked us a dozen times and shook my hand at least twice. My dad told him that he could come drive that kart anytime he wants and if mom gives the ok, he could even race it. David probably thinks we’re pretty cool, racing sprint cars and go karts, but the truth is that we can’t begin to imagine going through what he has and having such a great attitude at the end of the day. Thanks for sharing the day with us David and keep smiling pal.

David is headed to the city this weekend for another round of chemotherapy. Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

The Hawkins Family

See his video here

Great Story, Thank you for taking the time to share it. It is always about the kids............ We Will be praying for David...................Jim Cardey

Very, very cool! If that is not inspiration I don't know what is.

What can you say but what Ascot said. Very very cool.

My hat is off to David for such great spirit and continuing his courageous fight. My prayers are with both David and the Hawkins Family. I understand your fight against this unforgiving dreadful disease. My number 3 son , also named David got Cancer when he was 16 years old. He has since lost his left knee, tibia bone, left leg was amputated , right shoulder blade broken and removed, cancer 4 times in his lungs, and has has his thryroid removed due to cancer. He has had Cancer a total of 11 times along with losing his hair 9 times due to chemotherapy. He has been declared terminal twice. He is now 40 years old and still alive and everyday is a gift for him and us. He now does motivational speaking and talked to 30,000 students this last year about educationing them about cancer and to be inspirational in their life. My only reason for this blog is to tell you. NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT. My son David has a website at: kickstanddave.net and you can always call him at 559-756-0429 for anything he might be able to help you with. Our prayers will be David.

Allen

Thank You Allen.

It's kids like yours that set the standard for toughness and take away all excuses for the rest of us. It sounds like he's out making a difference for other kids and that's really neat too. I will pass this information along to David's family.

Chad

my hats off to you for taking the time to make a special day for this young man,my thoughts and prayers will be with him through the fight he will win.