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The Webster Family Transforming cardiac care
Our innovative new Heart & Vascular Center is named in honor of Helen and Wilton (Will) Webster, who, together with their sons, Alec (not pictured) and Richard (pictured with his wife, Kimberly Kenne), played a significant role in funding the center’s creation.
The Webster Family
Transforming cardiac care.
Simply put, Huntington Hospital’s new Heart & Vascular Center would not exist without the support of the Webster family. The Websters, including the late Helen and Wilton (Will), and their sons, Richard and Alec, have long been the heart of our work. Most recently, the family’s foundation — The Helen and Will Webster Foundation — made a generous capstone gift toward the new center, helping ensure the successful completion of the project. The foundation also made a significant leadership gift toward creation of the facility early in the project’s development.
The new state-of-the-art center, which opened in August 2021, has been named the Helen and Will Webster Heart & Vascular Center. Richard and Alec are thrilled that the new center named in honor of their parents is now in operation. “Our parents would feel so proud to know that the center is open and that our family was so involved,” Richard says. “Like me and Alec, they were both very passionate about this project. It was a family affair.”
Members of our Helen and Will Webster Heart & Vascular Center team include, from left, Stacy Pereira; Kalin Ichev; Candy Corral; Azhil (Alex) Durairaj, MD; Gail Cinexi; and Satenik Danielyan.
Deep roots.
Our friendship with the Websters has deep roots, and their story closely mirrors ours. “My great-grandfather was a rancher and miner who moved here in 1886,” Richard explains. The hospital was established six years later.
“Huntington Hospital is part of our family’s story,” he continues. “My dad was born here and my children were too.” The Websters have come through our doors many times since. Will once came to our Nan and Howard Schow Emergency & Trauma Center after a mild heart attack, and Richard spent an entire Christmas there. “Being in an emergency room wasn’t my preferred way of celebrating the holiday,” Richard says, “but Huntington Hospital provides amazing care. They make you feel like family.”
Impactful improvements.
The Websters’ connection to healing hearts goes back further than their generous gift to our new Heart & Vascular Center — further even than Will’s cardiac event: An engineer and pioneering inventor, Will worked with renowned cardiologists to revolutionize the fields of catheterization and electrophysiology. The medical advancements Will made through his company, Webster Laboratories, now part of Johnson & Johnson’s Biosense Webster, continue to impact the lives of cardiac patients today.
In that spirit of continuous improvement, our new Heart & Vascular Center has been intentionally built to accommodate future advancements. “We’re excited about how adaptable the rooms are,” Richard says. “They’ll allow the hospital to remain at the forefront of cardiac care even as the field progresses.”
Enhancing access for all.
The Websters want to create more opportunities for those in need. Through the Helen and Will Webster Foundation, they do just that. “Our family wants to help people progress — whether through access to quality health care or through educational opportunities for kids,” Richard says. “It’s about giving people access to more resources.”
This passion for supporting access for our friends and neighbors in the community shows in the Websters’ support of our work. “The hospital makes world-class medical resources available to every single person in our area,” Richard says. “It’s truly a jewel of the San Gabriel Valley.”
The Webster family hopes their gifts will inspire others to contribute to the hospital. “It’s so important to support Huntington Hospital because nearly everyone will need it sooner or later,” Richard says. “You may need it when your kids are born, or when you have an accident; it touches every family in our community. I can’t imagine Pasadena without it.”
Thank you to everyone who supported this project! We are especially grateful to the following donors who made transformative gifts toward our new Heart & Vascular Center.
Peter Arkley and Denise Wynn Eva and Jason Chau Heather and Paul Haaga Terri and Jerry Kohl The Lakeview Foundation Thuy and Buddy* Moss Helen and Will Webster
*Deceased
