Tony Wood of Spring Hill, Tennessee, received a wrong-number text.
While he could have just ignored it, as most of us would have done, he gathered five of his six children and took a picture to send Sydney Uselton, the girl on the other end of the line, just to give her a little encouragement.
“I thought, let’s try and make this young lady’s day,” Tony said. He little knew that replying to this random text would change the trajectory of his family’s life in a profound way.
While Syd was dress shopping, she decided to get a second opinion. Wearing a black, formal gown, she snapped a picture of herself in a dressing room and sent the text off to a friend. Or… to who she thought was her friend.
Tony immediately sent her a note back, but he also wanted to let her know that her pictures hadn’t wound up in unsavory hands, so he included a picture of five of his six kids giving a big thumbs-up.
“I figured that the children’s response would accomplish that substantially better than some middle-aged overweight bald guy!”
Mandi Miller, Syd’s friend, was so tickled by the exchange that she shared it on her Twitter page, where it quickly went viral.
It is not only just a sweet act of kindness on Tony’s part, but look at those cute kids of his!
Once the story was shared online, internet sleuths discovered that one of Tony’s children was missing from the picture. At the time, the youngest child, then-4-year-old Kaizler, wasn’t home because his mom had taken him to his chemotherapy appointment. Kaizler was battling leukemia.
Once Mandi read about Kaizler’s cancer diagnosis, she shared his GoFundMe page, which snowballed into a wave of giving that took everyone by surprise. Thousands of people donated to the little guy’s page, and donations far surpassed the fundraiser’s initial goal of $10,000.
“Kaizler is doing well,” Tony said. “We still have about a little over a year worth of treatments to go. He really wanted to try going to Kindergarten, so we gave that a shot, but he was getting sick way too often and had several hospitalizations.”
“That’s more than we had donated in total over the last two years,” Tony explained. “It’s been amazing and is a bigger blessing than anyone could ever know. We were backed up to a financial wall. I’ve been working the entire time, but I was slowly but surely succumbing to the financial rigors of the situation.”
Rachel, Kaizler’s mom, says she can’t express how grateful her family is for the financial help, and no one can believe this rush of good fortune came from a simple wrong-number text!
“It is so refreshing to be reminded that there are good people in the world who still care about others and are quick to be generous and kind to others,” she stated. “I would also like to thank EVERYONE from the bottom of my heart for all the kind words, all the prayers, all the donations, all the love and support. We honestly would never have been able to make it this far in our journey without every single one of you!!!”
