Granger girl turns up heat for fund-raiser
By Kathleen Folkerth
GRANGER — Little people can do big things. Mikayla Foose is proof of that.
The 7-year-old Granger resident, daughter of Lisa and Jeffrey Foose, recently saw a need in her community and did something about it. She earned about $80 through recycling and collecting loose change and gave it to the Granger Fire Association, which is raising money for a new piece of firefighting equipment.
According to Lisa Foose, Mikayla
noticed the fund-raising thermometer in front of the
fire station shortly after the family moved to Granger
from Cleveland in January.
“Every time we went past,
she wondered why the thermometer wasn’t moving,”
Foose said.
The mother explained that people
needed to donate money for the cause, and Mikayla asked
if the family could.
“I said we don’t
have any to spare, since we’re still trying to
sell our house in Cleveland,” Foose said. “But
we can do something.”
Mikayla first thought about having
a garage sale, but the planning for her stepsister’s
graduation party in June led to another idea.
“We had all these pop cans
waiting in the basement for the party,” Foose
said. “So we collected pop cans, crushed them
and turned them in.”
The family’s century home
in Granger also provided materials in the form of unneeded
copper pipes and wiring
that also could be recycled.
Foose said a jarful of change
the family had also ended up in the donation.
After Mikayla and her father
visited the scrap yard to turn in the copper and aluminum,
the total earned was $79.
On Aug. 6, Mikayla and her family
attended the Granger Fire Association meeting and surprised
everyone there with their donation.
“I thought it was fantastic
for somebody that little to consider something like
that,” said Granger Fire Chief John Hadam. “It
was a nice gesture.”
Hadam said the money will be
put toward the funding for a new thermal imaging device.
The camera-like instrument allows firefighters to see
through smoke-filled structures.
“We’ve got one that
probably is one of the
first ones that came out,” said Hadam, who estimates
the piece of equipment is about 15 years old. “There
are no parts available for it. It works sometimes.”
Foose said the importance of
the equipment is one of the things that inspired Mikayla
to act.
“She was genuinely concerned
about them not getting the money,” Foose said.
“She said, ‘What if they can’t find
me in the dark?’”
Mikayla, who will be in the second
grade this year at Granger Elementary School, is humble
about her accomplishments and reluctant to talk about
her achievement. But her actions have shown Hadam that
the community’s youngest members can be included
in the department’s fund-raising work.
“I thought it might be good
if we can get her classmates to help us out,”
Hadam said.
The department has so far raised
about $3,500 of the $10,000 needed to buy the thermal
imaging device, he said.
Mikayla Foose points at the Granger
Fire Association’s fund-raising thermometer. She
helped raise its temperature a little higher with her
donation.
Photo: Ken Crisafi
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