With its namesake to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend, the Junior Seau Foundation has donated $500,000 to renovate a pediatric urgent-care facility in Oceanside, hometown of the late Chargers linebacker.

The donation will help increase the capacity of the existing urgent care center at Rady Children’s North Coastal Center, a satellite facility of Rady Children’s Hospital that overlooks Highway 78 near Rancho Del Oro Drive.

Ben Metcalf, a spokesman for Rady, said the Junior Seau Foundation Urgent Care Center will help handle a growing number of families seeking care in coastal North County.

“Oceanside is our fastest-growing urgent care center. Patient volume has increased each year since the facility opened in 2011,” Metcalf said. “The idea is that, by doing this work with the help of the foundation, we’ll be able to get more patients through every day.”


Mike Kinkelaar, the foundation’s executive committee director, said Seau’s focus was always on kids.

“Junior Seau was dedicated to serving the children of San Diego,” Kinkelaar said. “We are privileged to continue that legacy by advancing Rady Children’s mission to restore, sustain and enhance the health and developmental potential of children.”

Seau — a star for the Chargers for 13 years before moving on to the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots — is to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, on Saturday.

The donation to the pediatric facility in Oceanside brings to $5 million the total that the Junior Seau Foundation has provided for various children’s causes around San Diego County.


The Oceanside Coastal Center also provides primary care at Sanford Children’s Clinic, which is named for T. Denny Sanford, the South Dakota philanthropist whose donation helped build the facility.