Hero

I’ve always hated that question that crops up in college essays and interviews:  who is your hero?  It’s been especially troublesome for the last dozen years or so, because my hero isn’t easy to explain.  There are no monuments or awards named after her, no holidays in her honor.  And she doesn’t have one of those jobs that lend itself to everyday heroism, like teachers or firefighters (at least, she didn’t, when I knew her.)

My hero is a thirteen year old girl.

Was.  She’s probably 25 or so now.  Her name is Cody.

I can rattle off a list of celebrities I met working at Disney, sports stars and entertainers and foreign royalty.  But if you ask me who my favorite person was to meet through my job at Disney, I’ll probably say it was  Cody.  My co-worker Kim introduced us all to her–we were in charge of the very front end of Main Street in Magic Kingdom, an area where roughly a dozen Disney characters visited on a daily basis.  She’d met Cody the day before while working at Epcot, and told us of the hero’s pending arrival at Magic Kingdom that morning.

Cody was visiting us as a guest of the Make-A-Wish foundation, and as with most of the children who receive such an honor, she had to wade through a river of crap first.  During the course of her year-long cancer treatment, her father had passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly.  As the family had made their plans for their Wish Trip, they’d never envisioned that they would be going without him.

Despite the fact that she had more than earned this week of happiness at the end of all that pain, Cody wasn’t focused on riding rides or seeing shows.  She was there on a mission:  autographs.  All the autographs she could possibly collect.

She was supposed to make this trip with her friend, Gabriella–another little girl from the hospital that she’d met during treatments.  They were looking forward to getting their wishes granted together.  At the last minute, though, Gabriella had some complications.  She was too sick to travel.  Cody was determined to collect as many character autographs and well wishes for her little friend as she possibly could, to give her strength so that she would be able to visit in person someday soon.  Cody had made this the entire mission of her trip, foregoing every other offering in the park in search of autographs for her friend.

As the characters and cast members of Main Street heard this story, we knew we had to do something special.  We grabbed an empty autograph book and sent our fastest messenger around the park, to all the lands, catching every character he could find, filling the book.  By the time he came back, every character in the park–and even some that could never be found in the parks–had signed the book, filling every single page.

That wasn’t enough, though.  We wanted Cody to have a special moment for herself.  She’d spent the whole trip thinking of others–she needed to know that SHE was important, too.

We got two big, metallic balloons–the kind that take months and months to deflate–and everyone on Main Street, character and cast member alike, covered them with messages of friendship and support for Cody.

It was finally 9 AM, and the park turnstiles began to turn.  Kim met Cody at the front of the park and led her to an unobtrusive little gate, between the firehouse and the barn, and one by one, the characters emerged.  Each went straight to hug Cody…and kept hugging her.  They hugged until she was surrounded by every one of them.  She was the first guest they met that day, and one of few people who can say she got a picture with every character on Main Street at once.

We gave her the balloons first, then we gave her the autograph book.  As she thumbed through the pages, stunned to see more and more autographs, her eyes filled with happy tears.

“We did your work for you,” Kim told her, “so that you could take today for you.”

There were lots of happy tears that morning.  You can’t always see it when a Disney character cries happy tears, but they do.

That moment fueled all of us through the rest of that day–through the blistering, hundred degree morning, through the torrential 45 minute downpour at 4:20 PM, all the way to quitting time.  After the last character headed in for the night, as we put away the stanchions and picked up the trash, we spotted Cody and her mom heading out of the park.

“How was your day?”  We asked, anxiously crowding around her.

“It was great!”  She said.  She told us about everything she’s done–eating lunch at the castle, riding roller coasters, she’d even been chosen by Merlin to pull the sword from the stone.

Suddenly, someone pointed out that the balloons were missing.

“Oh, yeah,” Cody explained, looking slightly downcast.  “The string came untied while we were on Big Thunder Mountain, and they floated away.”

“We’ll get you new ones!”  Kim promised immediately.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Cody assured her, looking thoughtful.  After a brief pause, she said, “now Dad will know who all my new friends are.”

Cody continued to correspond with us for some time after her Wish Trip, but one message in particular, several months later, made us all smile.  “Sending hugs for you all with Gabriella.  Her Wish will be granted in two weeks.”