A trip of a lifetime and a lifetime of learning
Since he was young, Matt has loved going to school and participating in extracurriculars like marching band. He was determined to make the most of his educational experience, a spirit that stayed with him even when he was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1998.
“The worst part about this for him was missing school,” says Matt’s mother, Anna, about his cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. “That’s what made him the angriest. Not that he had cancer and the fear of all that, but that it was taking away from school.
Matt and his family got the news on Thanksgiving Day, when the results of an MRI revealed many tumors in his body, including one in his back that had crushed his L3 vertebrae, and was endangering his spine and spinal cord.
“I had over two dozen tumors throughout my body,” says Matt. “Pick a body part: I had a full-grown tumor there.”
Between ninth and tenth grade, there was a lot of falling behind and catching back up for Matt. He pushed himself on weeks off treatment to get as much work done from home as he possibly could.
“I was very stubborn,” Matt says. “I told myself that when I wanted to go back to school, I would try to go for a full day. I pushed myself so hard that first day that I was completely bedridden for the rest of the week.”
Eventually the treatments eased up, the medications became more tolerable, and Matt learned to pace himself. He kept up with his AP and honors classes. He was able to continue with marching band, though at times he needed to lie down or sleep during breaks on show days due to exhaustion.
“The band parents would set up shade to surround me,” Matt recalls. “You would wake up surrounded by this little makeshift tent system because you’d fall asleep on the grass,” adds Anna. “Everybody at the high school was extremely supportive.”
Matt even joined the badminton team and was named “Most Inspirational Player” by his coach. “By the end of it, I got to the point where I could go in for treatment and then go back to school the same day,” Matt says.
As a marine biology enthusiast, one of the things that brought Matt joy during treatment was watching Free Willy. On his worst days, his parents would promise that when he got better, they would all go on a trip to see orcas. That led to Matt’s wish to go to Alaska to see orcas in the wild, an adventure that finally happened during the summer of 2000 when Make-A-Wish planned a trip of a lifetime for Matt and his family.
While in Juneau, they went out on all sorts of memorable expeditions. “We did a helicopter tour and landed on top of a glacier,” says Anna. “We also went to Salmon Bay and took a boat ride to see the ice capping.”
Almost every day during the trip, they went whale watching with Orca Enterprise’s Captain Larry, a whale watching expert with over 30 years of experience on the water.
“The goal was to go out and see orca whales, but we were never seeing orca whales,” remembers Matt. “We would see humpbacks, we would see eagles, we would see all these other animals. The whole time we were never seeing orca whales”
On the last day of the trip as they prepared to take their final boat ride with Captain Larry, Matt and his family realized that they might not be able to check the top encounter off their list. Then, something magical happened.
During Matt’s wish trip, word of a wish kid with a desire to see orcas had spread around Juneau. Everyone in the area and out on the water was keeping an eye out for any orca whale pods so that Matt could get his wish. Finally, another boat had a sighting and radioed the news to Captain Larry.
“The captain of the boat starts rushing out,” says Matt. “Normally he’s got this route that he goes on, but this time he’s just rushing. And sure enough, we run into an orca whale pod!”
Not only did they find the orcas, but the pod was in the middle of teaching their young how to hunt, a rare behavior to see. “We got to see an entire whale hunt from start to finish, as they went after these porpoises,” recalls Matt. “There was a mother orca with her baby, and you could actually see her teaching the baby how to hunt. So, we got to see the whole orca strategy and how they were isolating their prey.” Even Captain Larry told them he had never seen anything like it in his many years of being out on the ocean.
“If you’ve ever seen shows at Marine World with whales jumping and leaping and doing flips,” says Anna, “that was what they were doing. They put on a complete show for us. It was amazing.”
With the dramatic and happy finale to his wish trip, the power of community touched Matt deeply. “It was very encouraging to see this many people coordinating together for the sake of someone who they didn’t even know,” Matt says. “It really is a testament to how much caring people can accomplish when there’s a cause worth working for.”
Matt, now 37, reflects on his wish as an important part of his life. “It was definitely a good summer to transition after a very difficult season,” he says. “We were able to have a little reset, going from a lot of struggles and difficulties to now something fun. And we still have the memories from that week together as a family. We still have the videos from it that we can watch.”
For Anna, it was also an opportunity to put her worries about Matt’s cancer aside for a time. She says, “We could just have fun, you know. We didn’t have to live every day being afraid of what’s going to happen next. We could put that behind us for that period, that week. Because none of us knew what the future held.”
For Matt, his future continued to include his love of education and a determination to get the most out of every experience. He studied chemical engineering with a biomedical emphasis at UCLA while also participating in the marching band. Matt earned a PhD in PET imaging research for cancer. He currently teaches medical diagnostics at San Francisco State University in the clinical laboratory program.
Matt’s work today, contributes to the global community and overcoming the pandemic. “I teach the people who do all [the COVID] testing,” says Matt. “All the blood work testing, the serology testing, virus testing, all that stuff.”
His wish experience and seeing the power of people coming together for a good cause, inspired him to become more involved in his own community and to give back. Over the years, Matt has volunteerd many hours to his church and has even been on mission trips to Haiti.
“Seeing the support of a greater community is very important for people to realize they’re not alone going through something,” Matt says.
Matt believes organizations like Make-A-Wish are important because they give people a framework on giving back. “It’s not always clear how to help someone through a difficult situation,” he says. “So when you’ve got a group that’s specialized in helping people through challenging times, I think it gives people a bit of guidance and direction. In a lot of situations, you can’t help someone individually. But if you’ve got a group and each person can give a different piece of the puzzle, it’s easier to help out together.”
Like Matt, we believe there’s no limit to what caring people can accomplish when there’s a cause worth working for, like granting wishes! From volunteering to donating to fundraising, there are many ways for you to make a difference in a wish kid’s life. Visit wish.org/greaterbay/ways-help-us to get involved today.