The May 22, 2000 issue of People contains the following picture and article. Thanks to ERNEST “Jazzman” RESENDES for the “heads-up.”
On TV: Home Stallone
What does it take to get a celebrity couple to open their house to the public? In the case of SYLVESTER STALLONE and JENNIFER FLAVIN, whose Beverly Hills place was the scene of a guided tour televised for Home Shopping Networks viewers May 6, it was a cause close to home, as FLAVIN sold skin-care products and a percentage of the proceeds went to heart research. Their daughter SOPHIA ROSE, who turns 4 in August, was born with a ventricular septal defect, a congenital heart defect.
She’s fine thanks to surgery when she was 10 weeks old, but the STALLONES think more people, particularly new parents, need to be more aware of the ailment. “At first,” says FLAVIN, 31, “you think your baby’s a little fussy or maybe has colic. SOPHIA wouldn’t lie down; she would vomit constantly. She wasn’t gaining weight. But you never think that your child has a hole in it’s heart.”
After SOPHIA‘s condition was diagnosed, FLAVIN researched the problem and held fundraisers for the Heart of a Child Foundation, which supports heart-defect research.
SOPHIA, fully recovered is “the most energetic child I’ve ever seen, a whirling dervish,” says STALLONE. She is going to be fine, but says SLY, “a lot of people don’t know about congenital heart disease. We have to bang the drum loudly; and hopefully people will rally to the cause. We want to raise awareness.”
– Craig Zablo
[May 20, 2000]
