21st annual Dick Vitale Gala focused on pediatric cancer research

While being poked with needles for bloodwork or hooked up to different machines tracking the cancer in his body, Dick Vitale's mind is elsewhere . As much as the phone calls delivering a cancer diagnosis — the most recent one coming in April — have rocked him, or the doctor's visits filled with chemotherapy and immunotherapy have left the 86-year-old feeling feverish and tired, he's thinking about the children that shouldn't have to go through this. Sometimes he thinks about the little girl who's a Courageous Kid alum — the name of the children honored during his annual gala, who have experienced pediatric cancer — when she was 9.

Now, she's cancer-free and a teacher. A lot of the time, he thinks about Payton Wright from Lakewood Ranch, who inspired his pediatric cancer research efforts. In 2006, she was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 4.

She had intense rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. The sickness paralyzed her before she died a year later. On the car ride home from her funeral, Vitale told his wife, Lorraine, she would not die in vain.

"I'm obsessed more than ever because I have to see what I go through in terms of scans and blood work," Vitale told The Herald-Tribune. "All kinds of blood work and scans to see where I'm going, progress, and all that. I can't imagine 7-, 8-year-old kids.