Foundation started in toddler’s memory

CLEVELAND (AP) — Chris Jerry still hears the screams of his 2-year-old daughter, Emily, after a pharmacy technician gave her an improperly mixed dose of chemotherapy.

Emily Jerry of Mentor died in March 2006, three days after receiving the lethal dose during what was supposed to be her final chemotherapy treatment. A grapefruit-sized tumor found in her abdomen was gone, and her parents were planning a trip to Disney World to celebrate her defeat of the cancer.

Pharmacist Eric Cropp, 39, of Bay Village, failed to catch a mistake in the saline solution and was fired by Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital a week later. The Ohio Board of Pharmacy revoked his license in April 2007.

Cropp was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide and awaits sentencing.

After her death, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland signed a law — Emily’s Law — that governs the monitoring of pharmacy technicians. But now the 41-year-old old grieving father wants to take his cause across the nation through Emily’s Foundation, a nonprofit group founded in the toddler’s memory.

Jerry plans to push for a national law to govern the work of pharmacy technicians and help prevent medical errors such as the one that killed his daughter. The foundation will be partly funded by a $7 million settlement he won from Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, where his daughter died.

The foundation also will operate a Web site where grieving parents can console one another and offer advice.