INTRODUCTION   

NEARLY TEN YEARS ago, I sat with a man in a cowboy hat at a coffee shop table. With a leg crossed over his knee, he sat back, settled in, and drifted back in time thirty years, taking me with him. Pen in hand, I was ready—ready to scribble blue ink across the pages of my notebook, ask the right questions, and put the pieces of his story together in my mind as he told it. After all, listening to someone else’s story, capturing it in just the right words, printing it in a newspaper’s black-and-white columns, was my job as a reporter at The Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona. But when this man, Frank Shankwitz, cofounder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, took me back to 1980, to when it all began, his words became more than a story; they became windows to the soul of humanity.

As a reporter in that small, northern Arizona town, I had seen glimpses of the human spirit through stories I had written about local Wish children. I had sat in the living rooms of countless families, tears in my eyes, as they took me on their journeys to places even the most creative of minds could not imagine—dark places of emotional torment, where death was waiting while the rest of the world was living. Places that I, whose life had never been touched by something so unthinkable, could not fathom. In the midst of their stories, my pen would inevitably stop in disbelief. The strength of these families, the maturity of these children, was something that, no matter how many times I heard it, touched and inspired me so deeply. Every story I heard, every glimpse into these families’ lives that I was so graciously given, was a reminder of how deserving they were of the wishes they received—truly life-changing gifts.

I tried with all my might to capture in words what I took away in my heart—an indescribable sense of hope—but the space I was allotted in the confines of a newspaper was never enough. The stories I wrote became summaries of these families’ lives, small glimpses into their struggles, their determinations, their unwavering strengths, and unthinkable optimisms. I was forced to break down their stories and water down the details, capturing only a fragment of the faith, courage, and hope that pulled them through. I wanted my readers to feel the true impact that wishes had in these families’ lives and learn the whole stories leading to those wishes.

These families changed me. And when Frank’s watery eyes looked at me from beneath the brim of his hat, unashamed to let his tears fall, I knew the little boy he spoke of from thirty years before had changed him, too. The boy’s name was Chris Greicius, a spirited, seven-year-old fighting leukemia; the day he became a highway patrol officer was a bright point in his dark battle. In 1980, Frank and a few other officers made Chris’s dream come true, changing his life, short as it was, by granting his wish of becoming an officer. When Frank told me about the seamstress who stayed up all night to make a small uniform for Chris, the wings a jeweler cast in one evening, the autographed photo from the actors who played Ponch and John—Chris’s heroes—on CHIPS, I was filled with the same hope I was filled with every time I sat down with a family that had received a wish just like Chris’s.

But that was just the beginning of the story. When Chris passed away, Frank and fellow officer Scott Stahl traveled to Illinois to conduct a police funeral for their fallen officer, and they had to come up with $1,600 for travel costs in two days. A hat was passed, police agencies across the state were contacted, and they had half of the money in one day. A friend of Frank’s who heard of their mission donated the rest. Trying to keep up, I scribbled fast as Frank continued with stories of how officers in Illinois, who had heard about Chris’s funeral, escorted Frank and Scott to the funeral; how fifteen local police officers who had never even met Chris were there to attend the service; how two strangers lent them their motorcycles to lead the procession; and finally, how Frank and Scott flew home first class when a flight attendant recognized them from local news coverage.

The generosity continued nine months later when Frank, Scott, Chris’s mother, Linda Bergendahl-Pauling, and two others—the department’s Public Information Officer Allan Schmidt and Kathy McMorris, wife of motor officer Jim McMorris—decided to start the Make-A-Wish Foundation. News coverage around the state of Arizona about Make-A-Wish resulted in the organization receiving envelopes stuffed with checks and piles of money. The first official wish was granted in March 1981 to a child named Frank “Bopsy” Salazar. “He knows he has leukemia, and he has no fear of death,” Bopsy’s mother told Frank. “He knows what’s coming, so he lives life to its fullest.”

My pen stopped, goosebumps crawling down my arms, as the tears behind Frank’s voice paused the story. That’s when the window opened, exposing that raw, honest, undeniable, aforementioned element of humanity. In that moment, I realized Frank’s story was about much more than a little boy becoming an officer. It was a story revealing the thread that ties us all together—the strength, power, and resilience of the human spirit. It was a story of compassion and generosity, about people coming together to help other people.

It was also in that moment that the idea for Once Upon A Wish was born. People needed to hear these families’ stories—the heart and guts and truth of them—not just the stories in nutshells. They needed to know that the Make-A-Wish Foundation no longer changes only the lives of terminally ill children, but the lives of those fighting life-threatening medical conditions. These stories are not about death and sadness; they are enlightening stories of love, compassion, determination, and inspiration.

Frank’s story—the story of the world coming together for the sake of children—and the stories of those featured in this book, unexpectedly became a journey of self-discovery for me, leading me to a world where nothing should be taken for granted and every moment should be lived like it’s the last. The stories in this book will mean something different to every reader, will motivate and offer insight in different ways, but my mission in writing them was to ignite the spark of hope and inspiration that will forever live inside of us.