Good Stuff

by Sydney Johnson

Cap Quest

In 2016, Liz Lord’s life was turned upside down. Married with two young kids, she had recently left a job as an attorney, earned her real estate license and switched careers. That’s when she got the breast cancer diagnosis.

After undergoing a bilateral mastectomy, Lord needed chemotherapy. She remembered her son’s teacher had also undergone chemo and managed to keep her hair, thanks to “cold capping”—a promising procedure in which patients wear caps filled with freezing cold gel or liquid before, during and after infusions to prevent hair loss. The caps need to be frozen in dry ice and changed every 2030 minutes. Some cancer centers have scalpcooling machines to help with the rotation.

Knowing that her job required a lot of face time with clients, and not wanting to have to explain, repeatedly, that she had cancer, Lord decided to give cold caps a try. She acquired four rented gel caps, an electric blanket (to keep warm during treatments) and 40 pounds of dry ice, and used the caps during her treatments at The George Washington University Hospital.

Thanks to this technology, Lord kept most of her hair—but cold caps aren’t cheap. They can cost $250-$500 per infusion and are not covered by insurance. So in 2018, she launched the nonprofit Cold Capital Fund, which is run by a board of cancer survivors and provides financial assistance to patients who want to keep their hair with cold caps, but otherwise would not be able to afford the technology. To date, the nonprofit has provided $50,000 in assistance for about 70 chemotherapy patients in the D.C. area. “[Helping] is so gratifying,” says Lord, who lives in Donaldson Run. “Just when I think ‘I don’t know if I can keep doing this,’ we’ll approve a patient, and they will write me the most heartfelt and impactful, often hardtoread emails...and it’s worthwhile.” coldcapitalfund.org

Creatively Driven

Amid the pandemic, many theater companies resorted to virtual shows or shut down completely. Enter, stage left, Xander Tilock. During quarantine, the Justice High School student (now a rising senior) decided to write a fulllength play, A Winter Star, in which “winterland” creatures searching for a missing star discover that its magic has been within them all along. Tilock pitched his script to Encore Stage & Studio, an Arlington nonprofit that typically produces eight fully staged shows a year with actors and crew members who are under 18. No stranger to the stage, Tilock has been in 19 Encore productions since 2014. A Winter Star was his second directorial debut.

After receiving a green light from Encore, he launched a crowdfunding site to cover the play’s production costs and raise money for the kids’ theater, whose programs were languishing during Covid’s unwelcome intermission. Social distancing necessitated a different approach, so Tilock staged his production drivethrough style in December. Patrons arrived by car at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church and donated any amount they were able to give, then drove from scene to scene, with actors performing in the open air.

Billed as a seasonal holiday show, A Winter Star pulled in more than $12,000. Tilock, 17, says only a small fraction of the funds was needed to cover costume and set costs. The rest went to Encore’s Theatre for All! Fund, which supports the nonprofit’s ongoing mission to offer classes, camps and performance opportunities to all kids, regardless of their economic means.

Riding the wave of that success, Tilock penned another play, Voyager’s Compass, which opened in drivethrough form in May at WashingtonLiberty High School, with encore performances in July at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More and Lubber Run Amphitheater. It drew more than 530 theatergoers.

“[Encore is] a true ensemble; it feels like a family,” says the teen, who lives in Lake Barcroft and completed an intensive playwriting workshop with Northwestern University this summer. “I feel like I have really grown as a person and leader there. It’s my favorite place to be.” encorestageva.org

Tran Truong (below) and her winning retail concept for Coach

New Fashioned

Tran Truong is a talent to be reckoned with in the design world. For the second consecutive year, the 26-year-old Marymount University student (now alumna) in May took top honors in a national competition hosted by the visual merchandising company WindowsWear. This year’s challenge: Design a store concept for the 40th anniversary of fashion label Michael Kors with an eye toward sustainability and social change.

Truong’s innovative concept for Kors included sustainable materials such as recycled wood flooring, perforated mesh partitions to reduce energy use, and a digital mirror paired with an app that would allow customers to swap outfits virtually without having to physically change clothes. “I wanted to make users rethink the way they shop,” says the Woodbridge resident. “It’s not solely about the product quality— hence, it’s now an experience.”

For the 2020 WindowsWear competition, Truong designed a futuristic holiday retail store, window display, pop-up and event for Coach, all hypothetically set in the year 2030. Centering on a “crystal” theme, her design concept included a massive snow globe with the season’s handbag collection inside.

After studying architectural design in Vietnam, where she was born and raised, Truong transferred to Northern Virginia Community College in 2014 and discovered a passion for interior design. She decided to pursue her bachelor’s degree at Marymount in Arlington and graduated this spring. Next up: two internships in New York City, with Coach and Michael Kors. She hopes to one day work for the Smithsonian in D.C.

“As an Asian American immigrant, I hope to encourage anyone who has started a new life in a foreign country, just like I did, to have more confidence about who they truly are,” she says, “and what they can do.” marymount.edu

Camp (far right) with Johnny Showcase on AGT

Moment of Truth

Rachel Camp has lived in Arlington’s Courthouse neighborhood since 2019, but she previously spent nearly a decade singing onstage in and around Philadelphia. That’s how she came to know Johnny Showcase, who, with his band, The Mystic Ticket, combines rock, jazz, funk, sequins and spandex in a comedic performance style she describes as “Philly stank.”

Little did Camp know that that connection would lead to her 2021 national television debut. In April, Showcase invited her to join his act in an audition for NBC’s America’s Got Talent (AGT), serving as one of two backup singers (along with her friend Tabitha Allen) in a duo billed as “The Truth.” As they belted out tunes with expressions of deadpan nonchalance, their role was not just to provide backup vocals, but also to challenge conventional beauty standards.

The audition, which aired in June, generated audience laughs and a standing ovation from the panel, including body-positive comments from judge Heidi Klum about The Truth’s armpit hair (a point of pride for Camp), and finally, a unanimous vote that sent the group to compete in the next round. They didn’t win big, but Camp still sees the experience as a win.

“The way that Johnny Showcase shows up onstage and shows up in body and shows up in vibe is exactly how I want to show up in my own life,” says the singer, who holds a degree in theater from Montclair State University in New Jersey and spent the summer rehearsing for a theater project with Team Sunshine Performance Corporation in Philly. She also teaches virtual voice lessons and does simulation exercises with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she helps doctors practice how to communicate with parents of pediatric patients by playing the role of a parent receiving stressful or bad news.

Camp also works at Good Sweat Cycle Studio in Arlington’s Colonial Village shopping center. @johnnyshowcase on Twitter