I don’t normally “share” or “become actively involved” or “participate” or “feel”. Not because I wouldn’t care about you or your cause if you told me about it, it’s just the personal interaction I want to avoid. For sure, if you were laying on the street on fire, I’d definitely stop and help — of course, like Peter Parker, I’d stop and set up my camera first. Not to record myself for personal glory, it’s just, damn, you’re on fire and all that.

So I’m still not sure why I decided to help this girl. Actually, I’m not even sure if I did help her, but I did try, and that’s not something I usually do.

Without getting into too much detail, this is Hailey, she’s nine-years old. Her mom is friends with my girlfriend, her youngest brother is friends with my son. Hailey had a stroke almost immediately after being born. It left her partially paralyzed on her right side, and with significant brain damage.

She’s a pretty active kid, lots of sports, surgeries, struggles, stuff. Last year she discovered art, and it turns out she’s pretty frigging good at it.

So, after hearing her mom talk about her, and seeing a few of her pieces, I put Hailey in touch with some local artists (Vankleek Hill = artist haven), and collected some material for her, and a friend of mine, who works at the Ottawa Citizen, passed her story on to an editor. [Link: here]

Long story short: I have no idea if anything I did helped, but I think I made her life a little more interesting for a few days. Which is good, because no one needs another bored nine-year old walking the streets.

tl;dr: The Citizen needed photos of Hailey, so I took a few. They chose the wrong one for their online story, and a meh one for the print version. This is the one I liked… even with the chandelier growing out of her head.