CGS-authored

Claire LeVine loves to watch her 7-year-old grandson, Bobby Stearns, play his heart out in Little League. She loves to watch him scamper across the green fields with his soccer teammates.

What she doesn’t love is watching him endure daily insulin shots or painful finger-stick blood tests every few hours.

Bobby has juvenile diabetes, a disease that devastates not only the children who have it, but the families that care for them. LeVine would love to see a cure for the disease, which is why the Walnut Creek resident serves as East Bay president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

And it’s also why she is an active proponent of stem-cell research.

Though still in relative infancy, stem-cell research holds great promise to cure juvenile diabetes and a host of other conditions, from spinal cord injury to Alzheimer’s disease to cancer.

“To cure something, you need to focus on it,” says LeVine. “As JDRF members we say, ‘Let’s accelerate this.’”

Most Californians agree with her, which is why Proposition 71 passed overwhelmingly in November 2004. The ballot measure established the...