Hayden was 12 and Baylor was 11 when their youngest brother—9-year-old Grady—got sick. Diagnosed with aplastic anemia, Grady spent 35 straight days in the hospital away from his brothers, unable to even walk the hallway or open any windows due to his compromised immunity.

“When Grady was in isolation, not only did my boys feel like they might lose one of their best friends, they lost a mom and a dad too because we had to be at the hospital,” says wish mom and Make-A-Wish volunteer Amy Hofmann.

During Grady’s in-home isolation for another year, the prospect of his wish was a welcome distraction for the whole family. The idea of wishing to meet Will Ferrell led to a brothers’ movie marathon capped by their favorite, Elf. Grady eventually settled on a wish to go to Disney World, but not before the brothers enthusiastically reviewed and ranked every park and ride online. “The wish was more than just the actual trip,” says Grady. “It was also the decision-making process and the hope and inspiration that came from it during the treatments and isolation.”

Amy says that Grady’s wish helped heal the whole family. “Make-A-Wish does an amazing job of making sure that the wish child feels special. But also, the siblings, who have gone through equal amounts of trauma, are validated and feel very special,” she says.

Fast-forward almost a decade and Grady is a senior at Stanford University, studying biology and applying to medical school—a career choice inspired by his time as a patient. He’s been delving into medical research and, moving forward, hopes to gain more clinical experience. “I’m thinking about rheumatology, bone marrow transplantation, pulmonary critical care, or something where I’d be able to give back to the same community that I was once a part of,” he says.

Amy and Grady are giving back to Make-A-Wish too. In honor of the 10-year anniversary of Grady’s diagnosis, in 2022 the family donated $10,000, which is our chapter’s Adopt-A-Wish level of giving, representing the average cost of a wish. They adopted 8-year-old Lily’s wish, which was also to go to Disney World like Grady’s wish. Amy and Grady both joined our chapter’s Wish It Forward Council, and this year Amy is serving as the council’s chair, helping connect more wish families into the wish alumni community that offers ways to “wish it forward” and ensure the next child receives their wish.

“It’s a very powerful group,” she says. “Probably within the first two minutes of your conversation, you go deep and real, really quick. It’s like, hey, what are you most scared of? How did you overcome anxiety?”

In addition to serving on the council, Amy has been trained as a Wish Ambassador and tells the story of Grady’s wish to build support for the chapter’s mission. “Stanford is a hospital that I’m forever grateful for because they saved my son’s life,” Amy tells her audiences. “And Make-A-Wish I’m forever indebted to because I feel like they saved my son’s soul.”

While on Grady’s wish trip in 2013, Amy remembers meeting a volunteer at Give Kids the World Village who showed her a photo of his daughter when she was a wish child, and another photo of her as an adult with children. “It gave me so much hope that people get through this,” she says. “I want to be that person for other people. I want to say, ‘You know what? My son is a wish kid and here he is now, at Stanford becoming a doctor.’”