Twenty years ago, Phyllis and Andrew Rabinowitz walked into an emergency room with their nine-day-old daughter and walked out without her. On Wednesday, October 21, five hundred people filled Capitale on the Bowery and raised nearly $2 million to keep that sentence from being written about another family.
The occasion was Cirquetacular, a sold-out, cirque-inspired gala co-hosted by the R Baby Foundation and the COPE Foundation. The evening marked two decades since the Rabinowitzes founded R Baby after their daughter Rebecca died in an emergency room that was not prepared to treat her. “Twenty years ago, we walked into an emergency room with our daughter and walked out without her,” Phyllis Rabinowitz said. “Last night, 500 people stood with us and said that should never happen to another family. We will not stop until every ER in America is ready for every child.”
The numbers behind the evening
The case the gala funds is stark, and the foundations state it in figures. About 2,100 children die each year in emergency rooms unprepared to treat them. Eighty-three percent of emergency departments in the United States are not fully prepared for a pediatric emergency, even though children account for some 30 million emergency visits a year. A national pediatric readiness checklist written by medical experts does exist, and the fixes it calls for cost as little as $0 to $12 per child. No law requires hospitals to meet it.
R Baby’s two decades of work sit against those numbers. The foundation has raised more than $18 million, trained more than 6,500 physicians across more than 1,000 hospitals, and built INSPIRE, a pediatric simulation research network, with partners that include Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Mount Sinai. Its work reaches more than one million children a year, and its advocacy has contributed to pediatric readiness laws in Texas, Florida, and Utah.
Honors, and the other side of loss
Tina Cervasio of FOX 5 New York emceed the program, which opened with a candle lighting led by COPE executive director Mary Denning and moved through a live auction, dinner, an aerial performance, and a live appeal. Chinh Chu, founder of CC Capital, received the Visionary Award. Libby and Scooter Weintraub received the Courage Award in memory of their daughter, Magnolia Grace, and Sheryl Crow introduced them in a recorded video message. Hampton Water Rose, co-founded by Jon Bon Jovi and his son Jesse Bongiovi, was the official rose partner, and Jesse Bongiovi was among the guests. Soul singer Jac Ross closed the night. Andrew Rabinowitz and Douglas Newton co-chaired the evening, with CC Capital and Skadden as presenting sponsors.
COPE carries the half of this work that begins after prevention fails. Lillian Julien founded COPE after losing her daughter Michelle in 1992, and the foundation served more than 1,100 families and individuals in 2025 through facilitated support groups, Camp COPE NY, and healing programs. “The generosity in that room will carry families through the hardest days of their lives,” Julien said. Pairing the two foundations in one room made the logic visible: one works to empty the other one’s waiting list. The full release is at PR Newswire.
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