Corah knew from the beginning of the wishing process that she wanted to spend time with wild horses. Her family doesn’t watch a lot of television or movies, but they do have a very special movie they enjoy together – Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. 

“Corah first watched the Spirit movie when she was three years old. She instantly loved it and soon she was singing all of the songs and acting out the scenes of the wild mustang breaking free from the evil U.S. general over and over and over again. This game lasted for three years. Sometimes the general would turn into pirates or poachers or some other villain but always the game would end with the children and animals all breaking free,” Crystal said.

Corah often watched this film while recovering from her kidney transplant and it was clear that her wish would involve her love of wild horses.

“In working to grant Corah’s wish, we asked questions to find out where her interest and love of wild horses stemmed from. Upon learning that it was because she had watched the movie Spirit we thought, well, let’s find out if she can actually meet Spirit,” says Kate Vickery of Make-A-Wish Maine.

After some research, it was discovered there was a very real Spirit living at a wild horse sanctuary, who was the inspiration for DreamWorks animators when drawing the character. That winter, Corah and her family embarked on an adventure from Maine to California to visit the Return to Freedom American Wild Horse Sanctuary. With Return to Freedom staff members and her parents closely looking on, Corah fed Spirit apples, carrots and grass and gently rubbed the mane of the Kiger Mustang whose likeness she has grown so accustomed to seeing. “Doesn’t he look just like Spirit in the movie?” asked her mom, Crystal, eliciting a nod of approval from her daughter.

“She has a lifelong battery of amino-suppression drugs that she has to take and she’s going to be dealing with this her whole life, but she’s been doing great,” he said. “Outside of that, she’s a normal kindergartner. It feels important to me that we had a chance to honor Corah and her journey. This gift was certainly not something we could have ever given her on our own: to manifest a fictional horse and bring her to its home. I think kids are very much in touch with magic (Corah certainly is!) but the world rarely reflects the richness they know to be true,” said Corah’s dad Jamie. 

The wish impact on Corah has been a lasting one. Weeks after the wish, her mother updated us on her health. “Before our Make-A-Wish trip, Corah was having headaches and tummy aches every day. The doctor thought it might be stress. They disappeared on our trip and have not returned. I think this was just the right medicine for her!"