For want of a pocket rocket motorcycle, 6-year-old Danny Host fought an inoperable brain tumor to get back the use of his right hand he’d need for the throttle.
The Tinley Park boy also asked Santa for clothes and a Wii system he had used at physical therapy to help him get stronger.
So the ride to his house Saturday morning on a Tinley Park fire engine that was part of the Tinley Wish parade was gravy for the boy just diagnosed in October, said his dad, Dan Host.
“I’m glad he was having a good day for doing it,” Host said outside in the snowy yard. “This is really something, isn’t it? Every day our prayers are answered.”
More than 100 volunteers – police, firefighters and well-wishers from Tinley Park – joined the Tinley Wish parade of police cars and fire trucks that delivered piles of gifts and gift cards to five Tinley families facing special hardships.
Tinley Park officers and firefighters collected donations all year for presents and for paying bills, said officer Dennis Mahoney, one of the 13-year-old police program’s founders. Residents and businesses also donated gifts, he said.
The parade greeted Connie Soderlund, a mother of three girls and a little boy, ages 2 to 14, who has undergone chemotherapy for stage 3 cancer. Her baby son, Jacob, ran straight at Santa and Mrs. Claus as they exited a fire truck.
The last party was for the Crisman family, whose dad died suddenly last year of a heart attack, leaving his wife, Maria, daughter, Sydney, 9, and son, Dylan, 13, who survived a brain injury as a baby.
Another family chose to have their presents dropped off quietly, Mahoney said.
James Krafcisin was overwhelmed at the long line of people dropping off presents for his 6-year-old daughter, Katelyn, who was diagnosed in September with leukemia, and his two sons, Brian and Timmy, and wife, Maureen.
Though the cancer was a shock, Katelyn’s prognosis is good, according to her doctors at Hope Children’s Hospital, he said. And the family has been embraced by support in the community they chose to live in a few years ago.
“You wonder why people come to Tinley Park and stay here,” the teary-eyed father said. “It’s really touching.”
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