Community Helps Young Girl Fight For Health

LA QUINTA – She looks, plays, and smiles like any happy 10-year-old girl.

“To look at her on a day-to-day basis, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong,” says Chris Preston, fourth grade teacher at Ronald Reagan Elementary School.

But Caitlyn Neely is fighting a tough battle, one too hard for her or her friends to truly understand. For quite some time, Caitlyn has been suffering from bad headaches. This past summer, she had a seizure. Her family took her in for medical testing and that’s when doctors found a tumor on her brain.

Caitlyn and her family are still in shock and too emotional to talk with us.

Caitlyn has to take it easy. She can’t play the sports she loves, but her best friend is doing her best to keep her smiling.

“We mostly just walk around the field,” says Caitlyn’s best friend Victoria Bracco.

Schoolmates and teachers say, Caitlyn is a girl everyone loves.

“She is very sweet, calm, quiet,” says Preston.

Fellow classmates are rallying together to help with medical costs by filling up tubs with penny bank and allowance money.

“I’m bringing in my own money,” says Bracco.

As coins are dropped in, hugs are shared and encouraging words are spoken. It’s clear Caitlyn is not alone on her difficult journey ahead.

“I’m staying by her and playing with her,” says Bracco.

Thursday, a fundraiser will take place all day at Red Robin in La Quinta. Twenty percent of each table’s bill will go to Caitlyn’s family. There will be another fundraiser for Caitlyn at Desert Gymnastics Academy on October 17.

For more information on this event or for other ways to donate to Caitlyn’s family, please call Kim McLaughlin, the Ronald Reagan Elementary School principal, at 760-772-0456.