Nikki DeLoach is many things. She’s a full-fledged member of The Mickey Mouse Club and a literal hallmark of the Hallmark Channel.
More importantly, she just completed a three-year term as President of the Foundation Board of Trustees at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, one of the nation’s few pediatric safety-net hospitals that open their doors to all children regardless of their financial or insurance situation. To celebrate this amazing facility’s 125th anniversary, she’s spearheading its largest fundraising campaign ever, with the incredible goal of raising $1.25 billion to help ensure CHLA’s future.
She’s an entertainer. She’s a leader. Most of all, Nikki DeLoach is a caregiver.
“My mom said that I was doing this in preschool,” she laughs. “I was figuring out a way to get crayons for kids who needed them, and this is when I was three years old. I think I was really lucky that I was born with a heart for service.”
From Small-Town Girl to Disney Star
A product of Blackshear, Georgia, DeLoach was also born with a passion for entertaining, leading to her first big break — joining the cast of The All-New Mickey Mouse Club (alongside future megastars like Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Ryan Gosling) in 1993. Countless movies, TV shows, and Hallmark films later, she’s amassed an incredible resume on camera and behind the scenes, all without losing sight of her desire to help people.
“I’m so lucky to be able to write and produce and act, and directing is next,” she shares. “I love this job so much, and also I love its ability to give me some kind of platform to do the thing that I care about most, which is being of service in the world.”
A Mother’s Fight and a Hospital’s Heart
As we all know, service (and the kindness that inspires it) is most important to those dealing with tragedy, a fact that DeLoach was unexpectedly reminded of during the most challenging period in her life: the heart defects that were discovered in utero when she was pregnant with her second son, Bennett, in 2017.
“It was a dangerous pregnancy, and we didn’t even know for a while if I would even be able to carry the baby full term,” she admits. “He had three congenital heart defects that were severe, and he also ended up with the worst-case scenario of having a fourth, so he needed a total rewiring of his heart at birth.”
With every parent’s nightmare becoming her reality, DeLoach focused on the only thing she could control: choosing the best place for her son to receive care — a facility that she now proudly champions, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
“Dr. Vaughn Starnes is one of the best pediatric heart doctors in the world, and CHLA has an incredible cardiology division because they don’t just take care of the child … they take care of the family,” she explains. “Sometimes I was just saying to myself, ‘just get to the next 60 seconds, get to the next 60 seconds’ when you’re waiting in that room for eight hours for your child to come out of surgery, so my heart goes out to every parent who does this, and part of my job at CHLA is to be a liaison for parents – holding their hand and talking to them, not just about the logistics, but the emotional stuff.”
Finding Strength in Self-Care
With additional surgeries at 12 and 18 months old, the now-eight-year-old Bennett’s medical journey has been a challenging (albeit successful) one. A natural caregiver, it was years before Nikki truly understood the toll that years of stress took on her, and it was a lesson she literally took to heart.
“After years and years and years of giving care, it took me having an enlarged heart, cholesterol through the roof, and a lot of other health issues for me to finally wake up and realize that I needed to take care of myself,” she sighs. “The hardest thing I ever had to learn how to do was ask for help. It is hard and so vulnerable, and it might start small. I have to go for a 30-minute walk every day. I have to put food in my body. I have literally rearranged how I live my life in order to preserve my mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health. Because if I don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for me.”
Sharing Joy, One Story at a Time
Even with her never-ending work to help people through charitable efforts and support, DeLoach’s fans have never let her lose sight of the happiness she has provided for them through the movies (like her highly-anticipated new Hallmark movie, Home Turf, premiering this October) and TV shows that continue to touch their hearts – especially during her appearances at fan conventions like Thats4Ent’s annual Christmas Con event in New Jersey.
“It’s the most humbling thing you’ll ever experience — just tears and boxes of Kleenex all day long being doled out, because I want to hear those stories,” she explains. “It is a beautiful, authentic transaction of being able to have a conversation with somebody, and then see them the next year when they come back and be like, ‘How’s your daughter doing?’ And they say, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s great. She beat cancer!’ I’m crying. They’re crying. Does it get any better than that? I don’t think so. I think that’s the point, at least for me.”
