The Julia Fund

SKIP's Julia Fund is named for Julia Mikol, the source of the vision that became SKIP and real help for thousands of medically fragile and developmentally disabled kids throughout New York each year The Julia Fund is dedicated to getting kids off the SKIP waiting list and into the services they need to live at home. It also provides for family emergencies and covers service coordination for children who don’t qualify for help because of the nature of their diagnosis which may be episodic rather than ongoing. On average, the waiting list is 200 to 300 kids long.

Tenacious, determined, focused, Julia had a will beyond her years. The child got what she wanted, from a raspberry-colored velvet dress …to moving home from the hospital when no other child on life support in the state of New York had …to more years than the doctors ever said she would get.

Born on October 28, 1978 with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), Julia spent her first two birthdays in the ICU where she lived. At 2 ½ years old, she became only the second child in the entire U.S. on life support to go home. Four families in situations similar to hers watched her leave. She told her parents, Margaret and Yves Mikol, that all the children needed to come home. The seeds of SKIP were planted.

Julia lived until she was 7 ½ years old. SKIP is her legacy. The Julia Fund guarantees her greatest wish.