RESPITE FROM ILLNESS CEDARS-SINAI KIDS SPEND A WEEK AT CAMP.

Byline: Nicholas Grudin Staff Writer

Amid the patchwork of dusty trails and bunkhouses in the Verdugo Mountains above Glendale, children with sickle cell disease or cancer experience life as it should be - good old summer camp.

Interrupted at an arts crafts workshop Wednesday, 15-year-old Andre Scott paused as he painted a wooden star red, white and blue to reflect on Camp Rainbow, where he has spent a week in each of his past eight summers.

``Here, I don't feel alone like I do at school,'' said Andre, who suffers from a blood disease.

Camp Rainbow has offered the getaway for 15 years to young Cedars-Sinai Medical Center patients with hematologic and ontological illnesses. The camp, made possible by the Amie Karen Cancer Fund through the hospital, is an attempt to add normalcy to the lives of kids who have spent their childhood in and out of doctors' offices and as social outcasts on school playgrounds, said Steven Moore, a chief resident at the hospital who volunteers as a doctor and counselor at Camp Rainbow.

``There are a lot of kids with sickle cell disease, kids with leukemia and brain tumors,'' Moore said. ``They love it here.''

The camp also invites one sibling or relative of each ailing child to participate for the week. This year, there are 62 children in all - nearly one-third are on daily medication.

The healthy children benefit from the camp as well, Moore said, explaining that siblings of seriously ill children often get neglected because parents' attention is so focused on the sick kids.

One of the few unusual features of Camp Rainbow, aside from the medical center outfitted with chemotherapy equipment, is the amount of rest the campers get.

``These kids can't participate in normal camps. They're on medication and they need their rest,'' Moore said, watching as campers started to emerge from their bunkhouses after one of their several daily naps.

Nonetheless, Camp Rainbow has all the signs of a normal summer camp, even its share of pranks, Moore said.

Wednesday afternoon, dust on one of the main dirt paths had barely settled from one troop of kids when a couple of teenage boys sprinted to the setup of Carnival Night, where Nickelodeon was putting on a minifair for the kids.

Andre, who started at the camp when he was 7, remembers carnivals from summers past and lists them among his favorite activities at the camp.

Second only to basketball.

``I almost beat my counselor today. The final score was 10-8,'' Andre said as he fiddled with a Michael Jordan wristband on his left forearm.

Standing 6 feet 2, Andre is unusually tall for someone with sickle cell, a painful blood disease that limits circulation due to misshapen red-blood cells. Like many of the kids at Camp Rainbow, he has been on medication for most of his life.

At Camp Rainbow, Andre's fellow campers can relate to him, which is different from anywhere else he's been. ``People have the same thing up here and they understand. At school, people think it's contagious and jump back,'' Andre said.

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(1 -- 2) Above, camp counselor Amber Boone, 22, gives seven-year-old Kathleen Gonzalez a lift Wednesday as they return from the swimming pool at Cedars-Sinai's Camp Rainbow in Glendale. At Camp Rainbow, kids from the hematology and oncology ward of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center can play in summer camp for a week.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer