Denise Vasi is obviously beautiful when you look at her, but if you get to know her a little better, it doesn’t take long to see that she is just as beautiful within.
Last night, Denise and her best friend, Jacqueline Sherry, witnessed three years of their tireless work and effort come to fruition as they attended the Caron Renaissance 3rd Annual Save-A-Life gala in New York City.
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The event was hosted by Kelly Bensimon and Russell Simmons and aimed to raise money for the Caron Renaissance Lifesaver’s Scholarship Fund.
Denise has been involved with Caron Renaissance, one of the nation’s leading rehab centers, for three years. It is located in Boca Raton, Florida and has impacted the lives of over 10,000 families.
We spoke with Denise after last night’s event to get her thoughts on the night’s festivities, as well as her dedication to this cause. Check out our exclusive below.
GlobalGrind: How did last night’s event go?
Denise: The event was a major success. Our first year we had about 180 people, our second year we were at about 250 and this year, we were about 400 people.
Congratulations, that is a huge growth!
Jackie and I walked around the event all night just looking around and we were just in awe of how our baby project has grown. It’s just flourished.
How did you get started with Caron Renaissance?
My best friend, Jacqueline Sherry, came to me and asked me to join in and co-chair this event and we’ve been doing it now for three years. In the beginning, we were just a couple of girls with some nice contacts and we knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t necessarily know how to go about doing it.
Can you explain what the event was all about?
It’s for the Lifesaver’s Scholarship Fund. The Fund awards a scholarship for those who cannot necessarily afford treatment for addiction. It’s at a specific facility called Caron Renaissance and it’s located in Boca Raton, Florida. Caron Renaissance offers a very unique treatment program. We focus on mainly the family restructuring program because it involves the whole family as a unit being given clinical therapy while living on the campus. Their belief is that the patient is the family and the family is the patient. Everyone has to go through some sort of therapy in order for the patient to work on their addiction recovery.
What a lot of people don’t realize with addiction is that it really does affect every single person in the family.
100 percent. And, at the same time, every single person in the family is affecting the addict as well. From what I see and what I’ve heard, moms tend to be the enablers, they’ll say ‘I’ll cook for you’ or ‘do you need some money?’ and then someone is turning around saying, ‘they’re just going to use that money to go buy drugs.’ So, everyone has a role that they play and everyone has to wake up.
Why did you want to be a part of this, as opposed to another cause?
When I started with Caron Renaissance, I had just started a show that gave me a little more stability than modeling gave me, so I was able to put time into charity work. I was looking for something that was really moving to me. If you have it in you and if you’re that kind of person that wants to give back, everything speaks to you. Cancer and AIDS, in one way or another, it touches your heart somehow. When Jackie came to me, Jackie had already gone through the program. This program saved Jackie’s life.
So I could see it, I could touch it. The work was just very attainable to me because the work that they have done was right there in front of me. Jackie was very fortunate that her family could afford treatment. Jackie said to me, ‘this place is remarkable, this place saved my life.’
