Isaiah’s Wish to Have a Drone Takes Flight
Isaiah loves drones. In his words, he’s obsessed.
His love of flight started from an early age. Isaiah wanted to be a pilot before he was diagnosed with a critical illness. He dreamed of flying high in the clouds. Imagining looking down at the expansive world below brought him joy. Becoming a pilot was the future he always envisioned until a random accident revealed an unthinkable diagnosis – and his dream of being a pilot came crashing down. Thankfully, Make-A-Wish came into his life and a new dream took off.
Photography is a reprieve for Isaiah. When he looks out over a sprawling landscape, he sees the natural beauty around him and thinks about how he can capture the vivid colors and sweeping scenes in a single shot. He views the world through a unique lens: a camera’s.
“Photography allows you to see a different perspective,” said Isaiah.
Being surrounded in nature and thinking about photography has given him an escape from more intrusive topics, like his ongoing medical journey.
When Isaiah was around 12 years old, he had an accident while skateboarding. He was at the skate park and fell hard on the ground. When he got up, he felt ‘off.’ Gripping his chest, he came to a jarring realization. There was an indent.
Isaiah’s family took him to the hospital and doctors found something startling. There was a mass in his chest cavity.
He was admitted to the hospital where he stayed for months. At first, doctors thought it was cancer, but the results were negative. After weeks, and more tests than he can remember, he was diagnosed with lymphangioleiomyomatosis a rare and serious condition of the chest.
“The mass takes up space in my chest and my lungs can’t expand fully,” Isaiah explained.
In and out of the hospital, Isaiah’s medical journey has been long and arduous. He has been on a couple different medications and treatments to shrink the mass and improve his lung function, but they have all come at a cost to his quality of life. Every week or so, he would go in for appointments and check-ups, and the hospital became a part of his normal routine. He missed a lot of school and other normal everyday things kids should be doing at his age.
One day, Isaiah’s pulmonologist came to him with some joyful news. It broke up the monotony of medical talks. Isaiah was eligible for a wish. That day, hope sprang.
The opportunity to have a wish gave him a chance to dream again, and he immediately thought of fostering his love of photography. He wanted a drone.
“I thought a wish for a drone would be perfect because it would help me get more into photography,” he said.
Scrolling through Instagram, Isaiah finds inspiration for pictures he wants to take.
“It would be fun to do photography as a job,” he said. “I’d love to travel and take photos. That’s the dream.”
“I’m really grateful I have a wish,” he said. “I look at it as a way to escape. It’s nice to get your mind off things. I think about the drone a lot. I think about the shots I want to film, and I can’t believe it’s happening. I think a piece of me couldn’t believe it was real. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but here we are now.”
Isaiah said being able to think about his wish and getting a drone has been a great distraction. It’s brought him hope and joy – and thought of a picture-perfect future.
“I’m not done with treatment, but this is like a reward for everything I’ve been through.”
Isaiah
On Isaiah’s wish day, his wish-granting team, volunteers Lidia Hernandez and Todd McLaughlin, lined up a special surprise. They knew how much being a pilot meant to him, and so they reached out to Lidia’s daughter, TSgt Tellez. With her help, they planned a special wish enhancement for Isaiah at Fairchild Airforce Base (FAFB).
On a foggy morning in November, Isaiah and his family joined his wish granters at the base, and the surprises were nonstop from there. Starting with a custom pilot jumpsuit and helmet, Isaiah was treated and adorned like a pilot. They got a personalized tour of FAFB, went inside the air traffic controller tower, sat in the cockpit of a KC-135 Stratotanker, and got to meet many of the amazing units on base, including individuals from the Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school.
For a day, Isaiah could see what it was like to be a pilot before having his wish granted.
After lunch, in a full auditorium, surrounded by pilots, his wish came true.
Isaiah was inducted as an honorary pilot into the 141st Air Refueling Wing. Wing Commander, Colonel James McGovern, gave him a coin and official certificate signifying his induction, and in front of his fellow airmen, Isaiah got a call sign: Jace.
With pride, he gave a salute, and then it was time for one more thing: his drone.
The drone he had been waiting for was wrapped neatly in bright blue wrapping paper. His excitement was palpable, and his smile was big.
Today, Isaiah is a drone pilot.
“I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Everyone went above and beyond,”
Isaiah
His wish has made his dream a possibility. Now, Isaiah will have the chance to capture shots that would have been impossible, and it’s given him a chance to fly.
Special thanks to Bungie Foundation, Fairchild Airforce Base (FAFB), the 141st Air Refueling Wing, Master Sargeant Michael Stewart, and Isaiah’s wish granters, Lidia Hernandez and Todd McLaughlin, for making Isaiah’s wish possible.