Donations will send Ohio cancer patient to Disney

TOLEDO (AP) — A 4-year-old cancer patient who was denied a Make-A-Wish trip to Disney World by her father will get to go after all.
So many donations have poured in from around the world that the girl’s mother and grandmother will be able to pay for the trip in August themselves and give the rest to charity.
“We didn’t do this to get rich,” the girl’s grandmother, Lori Helppie, said Friday. “We did it to fulfill her dream, and people’s hearts just opened up.”
The young girl, McKenna May, of Haskins, was set to go to Disney this summer, but her father refused to sign off on the trip because he said she was in remission and the Make-A-Wish trips should go to children who are sicker than his daughter.
The family said Make-A-Wish requires signatures from both parents if either have visitation rights or is listed on the birth certificate. McKenna’s parents never married or lived together, but her father recently received visitation rights.
Online donations topped $12,000 on Friday and more money was being collected at banks in northwest Ohio.

Posted by Daily Chief on July 21, 2012. Filed under State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry