The Piscataway High School booster club supported The Marisa Tufaro Foundation during the perennial state power Chiefs’ regular-season varsity football finale against Hillsborough at Ciardi Stadium.

In addition to donating 10 percent of concession sales to our nonprofit, the booster club collected donations during the game for our foundation, whose mission is to help children in need throughout the greater Middlesex County area .

Members of the booster club joined athletics director Rob Harmer to present our foundation’s leadership with a generous check at the high school on Tuesday night.

Our nonprofit has been privileged to benefit from a longstanding relationship with Piscataway Township Public Schools, whose students, their parents, teachers and administrators have supported us in a variety of ways.

Established just over two years ago, The Marisa Tufaro Foundation has already made a profound impact, donating more than $100,000 and spearheading multiple community initiatives to help pediatric patients and other children in need.

Our nonprofit has also donated thousands of toys, nonperishable food items, winter jackets, baby supplies and other items upon which we have placed no monetary value.

In addition, The Marisa Tufaro Foundation awards college scholarship dollars to exceptional high school students who advance the nonprofit’s mission.

Emma Broggi and Gabriel Rodrigues, who graduated from Piscataway High School earlier this year, each received a 2019 Marisa Tufaro Foundation Greater Middlesex Conference Student-Athlete Scholarship.

From left to right: Mayor Brian C. Wahler, Emma Broggi, Gabriel Rodrigues, Greg Tufaro and Council Vice President Gabrielle Cahill

Mayor Brian C. Wahler and the entire Piscataway Township Council honored Broggi, who is now a freshman at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, and Rodrigues, who is currently studying at New York University, for receiving scholarships from our foundation during an August township council meeting.

Over the past two years, Piscataway high school student-athletes in a multitude of sports including swimming, bowling, baseball, basketball, football and wrestling, have supported our nonprofit through their participation in conference-wide events of which The Marisa Tufaro Foundation has been a beneficiary.

Piscataway assistant football coach John Thompson, his wife Terri and several of the high school’s gridiron players have volunteered at our nonprofit’s boardwalk-themed Family Fun Night at PSE&G Children’s Specialized Hospital.

Venerable Star Ledger sports writer Mike Kinney, whose wife and three children all graduated from Piscataway High School, said the school district’s remarkable generosity and willingness to give back is a reflection of the entire school community.

“I think it’s a reflection of Piscataway in general, at least as far as my experience here, and I’ve been here for 36 years,” Kinney said. “One of the greatest things that happened to me was meeting my wife and moving here. I came in as an outsider and I found a town that has a huge heart. One of their greatest joys is giving back to the community that raised them.”

Kinney’s wife, Eileen, a 1980 graduate of the high school, and son, Mike Jr., a 2004 Piscataway alumnus, teach kindergarten and history, respectively, at the district’s Knollwood Elementary School and Conackamack Middle School.

A student from Knollwood Elementary School was selected earlier this year as one of six students from five different Middlesex County schools to receive a Marisa Tufaro Foundation scholarship to attend a weeklong summer camp at Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Art Museum.

Last year, as part of its 27th annual Turkey Trot, a one-mile fun run and walk conducted the day before Thanksgiving on school grounds, Conackamack Middle School in Piscataway collected more than 1,300 nonperishable food items for donation to the township’s FISH Hospitality Program in honor of Marisa Tufaro and the tax-exempt nonprofit bearing her name.

Marisa Tufaro

Longtime Piscataway football public address announcer Kevin Donahue, a recently retired physical education teacher at Conackamack and former assistant girls basketball coach at the high school, broached the idea of donating the nonperishable collections in Marisa Tufaro’s honor with his teaching partners, Johanna Reid and Justin Strasser.

The Marisa Tufaro Foundation paid Conackamack’s kindness forward, making a donation in honor of the school’s students and staff to the township’s FISH Hospitality Program .

Marisa Tufaro, who would have been a junior this year at Edison High School, was born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a complex cardiac defect which required six open-heart surgeries. Marisa developed two life-threatening conditions that necessitated a heart transplant. The transplant was supposed to extend her life, but tragically cut it short when a postoperative complication developed into a rare form of blood cancer to which Marisa succumbed in 2017 at the age of 13.

Despite being hospitalized for more than two years and maintaining hundreds of doctor’s appointments, Marisa, who was an honor roll student in elementary and middle school, lived a vibrant life that inspired.

Marisa’s late aunt, Kay Milo, was an art teacher at Piscataway’s Thoedore Schor Middle School.

Some of the ways our nonprofit has made an impact are detailed below: