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guys. I had no idea what to expect.This little
boy had been on IVs. I thought paramedics
were going to have to help him.
Instead, a little boy in red sneakers popped
out the helicopter door and introduced
himself. He gave me a high five, and asked
to get on my motorcycle. He was fascinated
with it. He had watched CHiPs so much that
he knew every button and switch on that
motorcycle. This is the siren, this is the red
lights, this is the warning lights.
I kept watching Chris, thinking that he
knows he has only a couple weeks to live, and
he is running around like a typical seven-
year-old.Then I started wondering what else
we could do for him. That day, he became
the first and only honorary highway patrol
officer in the history of the Arizona Highway
Patrol, complete with his own badge and
certificate making him a full police officer.
His doctor pronounced his vitals as good,
so he went home that night instead of back
to the hospital. But we knew the highway
patrolman needed a uniform, so two ladies at
the local uniform shop spent all night making
a custom uniform for Chris.
The next day, I led a procession of motorcycles
and highway patrol cars to his home. The
neighbors were wondering what was going
on.Chris came running out, and we presented
him with his uniform. Chris was ecstatic. He
ran in, changed right away, and came strutting
out with his uniform and the Smoky Bear hat
that we gave him. He was proud as can be.
He said, “I want to be a motorcycle officer.
How can I do that?” I said that it was a shame
he didn’t have a motorcycle, because we’d test
him with traffic cones in the driveway. Chris
ran into the house and rode out on a little
battery-operated motorcycle that his mother
had gotten for him in place of a wheelchair.
Soon enough, he had on aviator sunglasses
like the motorcycle officers wear, and he
went through the test and passed. He was
fascinated by the wings on my uniform, and
asked when he could get his. I told him that I
would order them right away and they would
probably take a day or two.
Chris got to stay home again that day.
The doctor came to the house and didn’t
understand it but, again, his vitals were good.
I ordered the motorcycle wings, and I picked
them up the next day. But by then, Chris was
in the hospital in a coma, and probably not
going to survive the day. I went to the hospital
and, as I pinned the motorcycle wings on his
uniform which was hanging by his bed, Chris
came out of the coma. He looked at me,
looked at his uniform, and asked with a big
smile on his face, “Am I an official motorcycle
officer now?” I told him he was. I handed
him his uniform, and he touched the wings,
giggling a little bit, and showed them to his
mother. A couple of hours later, he passed
away. I like to think those wings helped carry
him to heaven.
We had lost a fellow officer as far as we were
concerned. Another officer and I went to the
little town of Kewanee, Illinois, and gave
him a full police funeral. We were joined
by Illinois State Police, county and city
police, and Chris was buried in uniform. His
gravestone reads, “Chris, Arizona Trooper.”
But flying home, I started thinking: this little
boy had a wish and we made it happen. Why
can’t we do that for other children? The idea
for the Make-A-Wish Foundation was born
at 36,000 feet.
Ballou:
This wouldn’t have happened if you
had not done something. You got it done,
influenced a huge number of people, and
started this foundation, which is really a
movement to honor those children who are
terminally ill and have a wish.
When I had a camera store in St. Petersburg,
Florida, some of my friends who were part of
Make-A-Wish said there was a child dying
who wanted to be a photographer. We made
that happen. There was no question about
whether we wanted to do it. We
just wanted to know when.
Make-A-Wish has generated
revenue in order to do good things.
We tend to think of profits only
as money, but there are other
ways people benefit from this.
What went on from there? You
established this initiative while you
had a full-time job with the police,
right?
Shankwitz:
Yes. I had an idea, but
it took a lot of people to make it
work. The most difficult thing
in the beginning was finding
people who believed in the same
idea. Several of the officers and
people who met Chris thought it
would never work. The Arizona
Corporation Commission requires
a five-member board with a
president, a vice president, and
three other board members for a
foundation, and it took about two months to
find four other people.
As you said, I was a full-time police officer,
usually a vocation of 60 hours per week.This
was before the days of the Internet. I spent a
lot of off-duty time in the library researching
how to start a nonprofit, but we finally
figured it out. A friend who is an attorney,
and another friend who is a CPA, helped me
put it together. It only took six months to
receive our 501(c)(3).