Carstar holds yearly Make-a-Wish event
That was the question posed not long ago to 11-year-old Robert Jenkins, as volunteers from the Make-A-Wish Foundation set out to make his biggest dream come true.
On Thursday evening, Robert and his family were the special guests at Kurt's Carstar Collision Center in Maryville, during a yearly fundraiser for the foundation. The event doubled as a business after hours for the Troy/Maryville Area Chamber of Commerce and brought out hundreds of attendees from local businesses.In telling his own story, Robert took the crowd back three years in time when he was first diagnosed with an extremely rare lung disease. Hoping to keep his life as normal as possible, his mother Claire tried to keep him involved in various charities and efforts to help others. While visiting a similar fundraiser for Make-A-Wish, she suddenly realized "he was the kind of kid they are all about."
"After some thought, he agreed to submit a wish," she said. "We are a very blessed family, so we asked him to wish for something that we could not provide. That opened up the door to a whole world of delightful possibilities."
Robert soon came up with three choices of famous people he would like to meet - Lemony Snicket (author of "A Series of Unfortunate Events"), J.K. Rowling (author of the "Harry Potter" series) and alternative music band Green Day.
"It was during my sickest days that those authors and musicians were my greatest comfort," he said.
Thanks to Make-A-Wish, the family was flown out to San Francisco to meet with Snicket at the Ritz Carleton hotel. Combining a limousine ride, a tour of the city and finally meeting the famous writer over afternoon tea, for Robert it really was even better than he could have ever imagined.
"It was great," said Robert. "He was really funny and really smart. For a few days I was not a sick kid. I was a sick kid whose dreams came true."
With a program center in Collinsville, the Make-A-Wish Foundation's goal is to help young people under the age of 18 who are facing life-threatening medical conditions. Since many of them forced to make regular trips to the hospital and go through the painful experience of daily therapy, the foundation uses volunteer dollars to grant their biggest request.
"Make a Wish provides an amazing service," said Claire. "Not just to the child who is sick, but the whole family. They didn't leave out his brother (9-year-old Christian.)"
Although Carstar and President Kurt Mueller have been involved with Make-A-Wish since 2001, this was only the second year they have gotten the whole community involved with a fundraiser. With a goal of raising $7,000, the community ended up raising them right around $8,000.
While not able to make Thursday's event, this year the shop will be adopting a 14-year-old named Bryan, from Highland, who has Dandy-Walker Syndrome. His wish from the foundation is to receive a full entertainment system, including a big-screen television, a DVD/VCR, a Playstation and games.
"This is a cause that's well worth it," said Susan Kuykendall, Carstar's business development manager and organizer for the event.
Mueller and the Maryville shop first lent a hand to the foundation when they were asked to simply fix up the hood for a teenager's vehicle. A few years later, they completely restored a 1969 Dodge Charger for an 18-year-old cancer patient named Josh who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The resulting vehicle was good enough to even win first place in a car show.
Since then, they have also helped send a 5-year-old named Zachary on a trip to Disney World after he had been diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, and last year gave 16-year-old bone cancer patient Kellsie a dream vacation to Europe.
For anyone interested in helping out as a volunteer for Make-A-Wish, or in referring a child to the foundation, the local chapter can be reached at 314-918-9474.
