An 18-year-old Burns, Wyoming, girl with a rare heart disease has received a Make-A-Wish Wyoming grant to travel to New Zealand in November.
However, while Blair Sanchez was at the ceremony to receive her wish, she heard all of the other stories of children with special needs and Make-A-Wish dreams and realized she needed to look beyond her own life.
“There were three or four other families there, and I met all of the kids. “There was a 9-year-old with brain cancer,” she explained. “And they had this whole pamphlet of all the kids around Wyoming that were waiting for their wishes to be granted … from leukemia, cancer, to heart diseases, skin diseases to autoimmune diseases.”
As the teen read through the 32 or so names who remained without a wish, she turned to her mother and told her she wanted to sponsor a wish for another person.
Her mother inquired about how she planned to accomplish this. They were both aware that a typical wish costs approximately $10,000.
“Right there I went and asked Troy (Thompson) if I could donate the funds from my pig to the Make-A-Wish Foundation,” said the actress.
Four months later, Sanchez is reaping the benefits of that desire, thanks to a generous governor, his wife, and others.
Thompson, a Make-A-Wish Wyoming Board member, Laramie County commissioner, and veterinarian, assured her that such an outcome was possible.
Something ‘Special’
Sanchez’s desire impressed Thompson, who applauds her understanding of the benefits of the program, and willingness to not only be a recipient of a Make-A-Wish grant, but also a benefactor for another child.
“That’s a pretty special situation,” he told me.
Sanchez considered the pig she was raising to be particularly special.
Sanchez, a longtime 4-H member and participant whose mother worked for 4-H in Evanston, Laramie County, and Colorado, stated that showing animals has always been a part of her family’s tradition.
The family currently owns special sheep ewes and goats that have been bred specifically for show.
Sanchez has shown horses, cattle, and other animals — but pigs were not on her mother’s list, despite having shown a few in the past.
After moving from Evanston to Burns, the family’s farm lacked a pig facility. Sanchez, on the other hand, claimed that a Nebraska farmer approached her and asked her to help him show a pig.
Her family agreed and built a barn with a concrete floor so she could prepare “Slate” for the fair.
“I had him from February to August,” she explained. The pig, a “crossbreed” bred for the “market,” grew from 60 pounds to 241 pounds during his weigh-in at the Laramie County Fair earlier this month.
At the fair, Sanchez stated that she made a poster stating her intention to donate half of the proceeds from her pig’s sale to Make-A-Wish Wyoming and posted it throughout the grounds.
However, the poster did not mention her own experience as a “Make-A-Wish kid.”
Taking the Mic
When it was time for the auction, she requested the microphone and shared her own story.
“They gave me the microphone in the sale ring, and I basically just told everyone that I was a Make-A-Wish kid and what had happened to me and asked them to help me support another kid,” she told the reporter. “Not a whole lot of people in Burns and Cheyenne knew I had a heart disease or knew I was a Wish kid because it’s not something that I like to say dictates my life.”
Sanchez stated that as a seventh grader in 2019, she enjoyed sports such as volleyball, wrestling, and weightlifting, but she began to experience seizures and spells in gym class.
She underwent tests and spent a significant amount of time in and out of hospitals, including four heart surgeries.
She was entered into six clinical trials for her condition.
“They basically told me that I have a heart disease, and they don’t know what it is,” she explained. “They tried everything that they could to fix it and we’re completely out of options now.”
She had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator placed in her chest, which detects and stops life-threatening heart arrhythmias and also functions as a pacemaker.
Her physician recommended her for the Make-A-Wish program.
She was told she had to give up sports, stop showing livestock, and not ride her horse. But her love for animals kept her in the ring.
“I continued showing livestock and riding horses,” she told me.
Gordon’s Purchase
After sharing her story this month in the fair sale ring, her hog’s auction price was bid up to $12,500 — Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and his wife, Jenny, and the Wyoming Hunger Initiative claiming “Slate” as their prize.
Sanchez stated that “add-on” contributions to Gordon’s bid are still being tallied, but she hopes to provide much more than half to Make-A-Wish Wyoming.
“I assumed we could simply give $10,000 plus all the add-ons. “Certainly, we have at least $2,000 in add-ons,” she stated. “So, I’m hoping we’re about to hit like $15,000 to $20,000 as a total that I can donate to Make-A-Wish.”
This month, the Burns High School graduate began his studies at Fort Scott Community College in Fort Scott, Kansas. She studies animal science and is a member of the livestock judging team.
Initially, she planned to hike and kayak in Switzerland as part of her Make-A-Wish Wyoming trip, but her college schedule did not allow for that. She is now planning a trip to New Zealand in November with family.
“We’re going to go look at sheep farms and go rafting and all this crazy outdoor stuff that I am super excited about,” she told me.
Thompson stated that most people believe the Make-A-Wish program is for children with terminal illnesses, but it also serves those with critical illnesses and conditions that become a focus and change people’s lives, such as Sanchez’s case.
“It gives the kids and the family a chance to take their mind off of the disease,” he told me. “One of the things we talk about with Make-A-Wish is how wonderful it is to bring families back to just being families.”
He stated that Sanchez’s gift will positively impact the life of another young person.
“It’s a pretty remarkable story from a pretty remarkable kid,” according to him.
