A LITE-FM Christmas Wish for Cierra

LITE-FM's Christmas Wish is back, thanks to our friends at Pioneer Federal Credit Union. Miracle Marathon day brought us to St. Luke's Hospital to visit with Cierra. 

If the name Cierra Shaffer sounds familiar, it should.  Cierra became a local celebrity when her oncology team at St. Luke's started their quest to get her in touch with Vice President Joe Biden. After being diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia at the age of 17, she told the staff at St. Luke's that her goal in life was to meet Biden in person.  Not only does she admire him for being a man's man, as a cancer patient she became appreciative of his work on cancer initiatives after loosing his son to caner. Word eventually got to the Vice President and even though he wasn't able to visit Cierra in Idaho, he made it a point to reach out.  During a very special 7's Hero, Maggie O'Mara captured Cierra's reaction to getting a video call from Biden.

Eventually, Cierra's cancer went into remission and she was able to attend her graduation from Fruitland High School.  Unfortunately, this fall she started to experience symptoms again and when she went in for testing, doctors found out that the cancer had returned and there were spots of it on her brain and lungs. When the Fruitland Band Moms found out, they rallied around Cierra and her mom Suzy, traveling to St. Luke's with warm meals whenever they can.

Cierra's cancer is very aggressive and her mom is praying for a miracle, but for the foreseeable future, they'll call St. Luke's home. The band boosters wanted to do something to lift Suzy and Cierra's spirits while they spend the holidays there.  The cancer treatments are starting to affect Cierra's eyesight so they thought a larger TV and game system would life Cierra's spirits.

I just so happened to know a very, very good friend of LITE-FM who had an extra TV and a Wii game system that wanted nothing more than to give it to Cierra to cheer her up so we piled into the Team Subaru of Nampa Delivery Sleigh.  We took it to surprise Cierra along with dinner gift cards for Smoky Mountain Pizzeria Grill, Soup Kettle Grill, Olive Garden, Panera, Chilis, Papa Murphy's and Starbucks so that she and her mom can take a break from hospital food.  We also gave her an Amazon gift card to do some Christmas Shopping with.

Click where you see the play button on the birdies to listen hear the wish and then scroll to the bottom to see Maggie's piece on her from this spring!