Woman finds that kindness of strangers does exist
VANCOUVER, Wash. – Crystal Mills found out that people really do care after she decided to help grant the dying wish of a local father with brain cancer.
But she has never met that father, Dustin Hughes, except on Facebook.
"I would have never even known about him if it weren't for Facebook," she says.
Mills joined a Facebook group to support the Portland father battling terminal brain cancer.
"It kinda just passed by my mind and a few weeks later I was rocking my son to sleep, and I just had this really powerful feeling that I needed to do something to help him," she says.
Mills got the courage to ask a total stranger a tough question: What's on his bucket list? At the top of Hughes' list was a trip to Disneyland with his three boys. So Mills set up an online fundraiser on social fundraising platform Fundly to make it happen. The Fundly account was almost at $9,000 by late Thursday night.
"And the very first time anybody even donated $25, I was crying, I was a mess. I didn't think this was going to work. And I was blown away," Mills says. "I know that this is people's hard earned money and people really are selfless, people really do care. It doesn't seem like anyone does today, but people really do care."
"It's crazy. It's so awesome," says Hughes' friend Mikal Mele. "He feels humbled. He feels amazed. It's a miracle."
Mele works for Hughes at Northwest Mortgage Advisors. He had surgery this week and wasn't up to being interviewed. But Mele says he's overwhelmed by the kindness.
"I think it's something that he wants to do while he's still feeling well, and it's something that his kids will always remember with him," she says. "It's one last awesome trip for them."
"He knows that he only has so many moments left, and he's so strong and he's so amazing, and it made me realize that the things I thought matter in my life really aren't as important as I thought they were," says Mills. "The whole reason of life is really to live and to give to other people."