How one family honors daughter by raising money for Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation: "She is the light"

Over the past 20 years, we have met so many heroes and their families through the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. And sadly, we've met families who have lost their heroes.

The Garibaldis turned their heartache into a movement to remember sweet Lucy and help future heroes along the way.

"She was truly a dream. She was bright-eyed, big blue eyes, extremely happy … could not have asked for a more perfect daughter," Emily Garibaldi said about her daughter, Lucy.

She was the light of her parents' lives and had a smile that shone through the worst days. And there were some very bad days. 

"She had this spot on her back that looked like a spider bite, and she started to get a lot of fevers, so we realized something was wrong, so we took her to the pediatrician," Garibaldi said. "And it was that day, that first blood draw, that our life changed forever."

It wasn't a spider bite. It was cancer — an aggressive form of leukemia. 

Lucy and her parents, Emily and Pete, moved into a small room at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital for treatment.

"Things were going really well. She wasn't really sick. She powered through everything," Emily Garibaldi said.

Treatment wiped out the cancer, but Lucy's weakened body had another ailment, one that stopped her from making stem cells, blood or platelets.

She would need a bone marrow transplant.

"We then packed everything up and relocated to Philadelphia into another 12x12 hospital room with our daughter," Garibaldi said. "That hospital room was really a shelter of love. Amongst the three of us, we had some really amazing and devastating times."

They could not find a perfect match for Lucy's bone marrow transplant. They tried less-than-perfect matches, but none of those worked. Still, Lucy's light continued to shine.

"We really had a happy, healthy girl, chasing her down the hallway, carrying the IV pole, making sure it didn't get too far," Garibaldi said.

But Lucy's body was tired.

"The chemotherapy had destroyed her cells to a point where they were just not able to rebuild fast enough," Garibaldi said.

Lucy passed away just a month before her second birthday from a brain hemorrhage — cancer-free.

Lucy's mom and dad decided they wanted to honor her life just like Jay and Liz Scott honor Alex's life. So they decided to raise money for Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation in Lucy's name.

"We need to continue this movement. We need to continue to support the researchers, the oncologists, the labs that are working on breakthroughs for our kids and ultimately providing children the better outcomes, those better treatments that they so desperately deserve," Garibaldi said. 

They created "Team Love for Lucy Always" and ran the Philadelphia Marathon to benefit Alex's.

Then came golf outings, yard sales and taking part in Alex's Million Mile every September.

In the past decade, they've raised more than $860,000.

"It's giving families more time together, giving kids more time on this earth to make an impact and to live the life that they were intended to live," she said.

And they're making sure their children — Lucy's siblings — know all about their sister and her legacy.

"They have always known that they've had a sister. She is the light and the beacon within this family," Garibaldi said.

A light that will shine until there's a cure for all children with cancer.

Join CBS Philadelphia for the 20th annual Alex Scott A Stand for Hope Telethon, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Funds are being raised for childhood cancer research. To donate, visit here.