From an emergency amputation to the top of the podium.
When Jaime Kathryn Monterde was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, surgeons had hours, not days, to act. Her leg was amputated to stop the cancer from spreading. Her mother watched her 15-year-old daughter wake up in a Cebu hospital bed, missing everything below the knee. What happens next is the reason we built this platform.
An aggressive bone cancer, an emergency amputation.
Jaime grew up in the Philippines — athletic, social, a teenager like any other. Then came the pain. Then the scans. Then the words no family is ready for: osteosarcoma, aggressive, act now.
The surgery that saved her life took her leg. Recovery was quiet. Her family did not have the means for a prosthesis — the kind that would let her walk, let alone run, again. The months after her amputation were the hardest of her life.
A prosthesis arrives. So does her future.
Games For Love, through the +1Up LifeBridge program in partnership with Helping Hands Ministry in the Philippines, sourced Jaime's first prosthetic leg. From GFL's earlier record of that day:
"When the prosthesis arrived, Jaime was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. Her eyes filled with tears of happiness and laughter."
She began physical rehab. She relearned balance, weight, stride. She credits 1Up LifeBridge with not only saving her life, but helping her get back on her feet.
I can't believe how far I've come.
— Jaime Kathryn Monterde, Cebu, Philippines · after the 2024 National Para Games
Three gold medals. One weekend. Manila.
Four years after her amputation, Jaime stood on a podium at the Philippine National Para Games in Manila. Then she stood on it twice more. Three gold medals, one athlete, one story that began in a hospital bed in Cebu.
She did not get there alone. She got there because strangers — case workers, donors, a ministry in the Philippines, and a nonprofit in the U.S. — decided a kid in the Global South deserved the same chance a kid anywhere else would get.
Jaime is an intern now. And a recruiter.
Jaime is currently an intern and athlete at the University of Cebu Sports Development Office, training for the next Games while helping coach younger para-athletes. She is also the first face of our pass-it-forward model: every dollar given in her name funds the next 1Up LifeBridge kid waiting on their own first step.
Her journey is not a finished story. It's a working template. The next Jaime is already in the pipeline.
