Karen Waldron, Shawn Ricci donate $15 million to Animal Cancer Care and Research Center

Animal advocates Karen Waldron and Shawn Ricci of Shawsville are giving $15 million to the Animal Cancer Care and Research Center at Roanoke, supporting cancer treatment for pets and translational research that can also help people.

The gift not only represents the largest sum ever donated to the cancer center, which opened in 2020, but also the largest single non-estate gift ever donated to the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, which graduated its 43rd class of veterinarians on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus in the spring.

The gift was announced Saturday, Sept. 12, at an open house event at the cancer center, located in the Virginia Tech Carilion Health Sciences and Technology Campus. The Animal Cancer Care and Research Center is one of three clinical teaching hospitals of the veterinary college, joined by the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Blacksburg and the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg.

“Shawn and I had a serious talk and decided we need to help these people make this the best clinic, the best research center in the United States. Period,” Waldron said. “When you go behind the scenes and see the new equipment they have, you learn about the research that Dr. [Joanne] Tuohy and her team are doing, and Dr. [Beatrix] Manning with radiation, it took the fear that I had from the word ‘cancer.’"

Investing in people to help animals

Waldron, CEO of Fralin & Waldron Inc., a commercial and residential building company headquartered in Daleville, said the impetus behind the gift is respect for and thanks to the clinicians, technicians, and support staff of the cancer center, plus empathy for every animal receiving treatment and every client faced with having a pet suffering from cancer. 

She and Ricci have recently had two of their own pets successfully treated at the cancer center. Ricci said their desire is for cutting-edge treatment for cancer to become more practical and affordable for a larger number of pet owners.  

“Over the years, we've had many, many animals that have had varying forms of cancer,” said Ricci, a former equestrian vaulter who along with his wife own and operate Bent Tree Farm, a horse breeding and training center on the historic Waldron family estate in Shawsville. “Veterinarians make the diagnosis and there’s a referral, but the referral in the past has often been a great distance away. We’ve been fortunate that we can take time off, get the hotel, and stay with the animal undergoing treatment. But it is really wonderful for people in this area to get that referral and go just 20, 30 minutes up the road, and they don't have to worry about finding hotels, finding babysitters for their kids. It’s a much less traumatizing experience for people to be able to have local care of this quality.” 

Waldron serves on the board of directors of the Mountain View Humane Spay/Neuter Clinic. Moved by the many abandoned dogs and cats often dropped off at their farm, she and Ricci entered a partnership with Roanoke Valley SPCA in 2010 to found the Waldron-Ricci Spay/Neuter Clinic in Christiansburg.

The $15 million gift will be split evenly, $7.5 million each to clinical and research support.

For clinical support, $4.12 million will endow three professorships, including a medical oncologist, radiologist, and surgical oncologist. An additional $3.38 million will fund additional staff, equipment, new faculty recruitment, and start-up costs.

For research, $4.65 million will endow a fund to support translational cancer research, including the hiring of a research director and partial or full support for one or more research scientists, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, lab managers, or clinical trials coordinators. An additional $2.85 million will support submitted research proposals and administrative support, additional personnel, supplies, and equipment. 

“They are wonderful people,” Beatrix Manning, chief medical officer at the Animal Cancer Care and Research Center and a clinical assistant professor of radiation oncology at Virginia Tech, said of the donors. “They love animals, but what also stands out to me is that Karen and Shawn understand that providing the level of care we aspire to is about more than having the best technology and equipment — it’s about the people. They recognize that investing in talented, compassionate veterinary specialists and support staff is just as important, and that building an exceptional team is ultimately what allows us to provide exceptional care. That’s exactly what their gift is going toward.”

Manning said the gift would help the cancer center expand its capacity, allowing it to accept more patients beyond the seven to 10 new consultations it currently sees each week.

Fight against cancer is same battle for pets and people

The research and clinical trials performed at the cancer center are translational, in that discoveries and treatment successes involving pets can inform and guide advancements in cancer treatment for people.  

“The research on our patients that have cancer helps people because the cancers in pets and people are, sadly, very similar,” said Joanne Tuohy, associate professor of surgical oncology and a leading researcher in histotripsy, the use of focused sound waves to dissolve cancer tissue. “So what we learn from our pets with cancer can also then be applied to people with the same type of cancer. We can also learn from people with cancer in the other direction, back to our pets with cancer as well.”

“This tremendous gift gives us the ability to recruit and retain for the long term, and it strengthens the connection between what we learn treating cancer in beloved pets and how that knowledge can directly improve the lives of people with cancer,” said M. Daniel Givens, dean of the veterinary college. “Karen and Shawn understood something important: The equipment and the building matter, but it's the people — the clinicians, the technicians, the researchers — who make this kind of compassionate and cutting-edge care possible. Their gift invests in exactly that.”

The cancer center stands amid a burgeoning biomedical corridor in Roanoke, adjacent to Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and the Virginia Tech Carillion School of Medicine. The seven-story, 250,000-square-foot Carilion Taubman Cancer Center is under construction across the street from the animal cancer center.

“I see this region becoming a bright light in research and in helping not just animals, but people, going forward,” Waldron said.

Personal involvement with veterinary college

Waldron and Ricci own and operate Bent Tree Farm, which opened in 1975 and breeds and trains horses that compete in carriage driving and horse shows across North America.  

“From day one, I have been involved with the vet school, originally more so with the equine side because we started using their veterinarians for almost all of our care,” Waldron said. The farm has often had veterinary students working in its stables.

In 2024, Waldron and Ricci donated $4 million to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Blacksburg to support the hiring of key personnel to improve emergency and critical care for both small animals like dogs and cats and large animals such as horses.

Waldron and Ricci have two pets who are living, and thriving, because of recent treatment they received from Manning and Tuohy.

Beckham, a cat Waldron and Ricci have had for 13 years, suddenly became uncoordinated when walking and started falling down. 

“Then over a few days, it progressively got to the point where the cat was only able to lay on his side,” Waldron recalled. “He could not eat. He could not drink.” 

Waldron thought euthanasia might be in order, but Tuohy discovered that Beckham had a tumor in his ear. Manning developed a plan for 11 treatments of focused radiation.

“By the seventh treatment, this cat was not dizzy anymore,” Waldron said. “He was starting to eat on his own. … And by the end of the 11th treatment, you would never know that anything had been wrong.”

“Other than having his eye shaved, he's 100 percent. And it had been literally hours before we were going to have him put down, because he could not stand up at all. Without that type of collaboration between veterinarians at Virginia Tech and the cancer center, this would never have happened. This animal would not be with us today. I don't know how long he's going to go before something may come back, but right now, he is living an incredible life, and it is due to them.”

Lafayette is a dog that was abandoned on the road near Bent Tree Farm. He had large lumps in his throat, which turned out to be thyroid cancer, growing almost to the point of closing off his throat. 

“We went to see Dr. Tuohy, and she said she couldn’t make any predictions about how the surgery was going to go because the tumors were rather large,” Ricci said. “He had his thyroid and parathyroid removed, and because of follow-up treatments and the chemotherapy, he has been living an absolutely fantastic life. You would not know anything was wrong with this dog.”

‘Love to stop all this cancer’

Waldron and Ricci credit the entire staff at the cancer center for making difficult situations more hopeful.

“What they bring to our region is like nothing I have witnessed working with different universities and different private clinics,” Waldron said. “Not only the techniques but the care. The entire staff at the Animal Cancer Care and Research Center is like nobody I've ever worked with, from the people checking you in to all the texts they send to the people running the equipment in the back. Their head clinicians are off the charts with their skills and their personal care of our animals.”  

It is with that love of how they and their animals have benefited from the veterinary college and the cancer center in the past and present, but with an eye to what it can become in the future, that Waldron and Ricci have chosen to give such a large gift to the cancer center, now.

"Karen and Shawn have been part of the veterinary college's story for decades,” Givens said. “What greatly impacts me is that their generosity comes from lived experience — from Beckham and Lafayette, and from every animal they've helped through their leadership in our region’s animal shelters. We're deeply grateful, and we intend to make the most of the trust they've placed in us."

“They would love to stop all this cancer,” Waldron said. “That is their goal, and it is exciting to know that they truly are working toward that.”