Cassie Gretschel and her little brother, Max, have a wonderful Christmas tradition.
Gretschel says Max, who is 25, has severe mental and physical disabilities, including Cerebral Palsy and scoliosis. She writes that his brain development is on par with a 5-year-old, and that he has impaired vision and spends most of his time in a wheelchair.
And there’s only one thing Max wants for Christmas — the same thing he asks for every year: A police Hummer Tonka truck. In blue.
“Max thinks that the Tonka Police Hummer is the holy grail of all toys,” Gretschel says in an email. “It’s not too loud, it lights up, it’s big without being too big and it goes forwards and backwards slowly with the flip of a lever. It also has a winch and hook that wind and unwind with a lever. For someone visually and mobily [sic] impaired, it’s fun and very simple to operate.”
Gretschel and her family have given Max a new version of the same truck every year since it first came out in 2000. There’s just one problem — the toy has since been discontinued, and Max’s family had already gathered up all the models they could find on eBay and other internet auction sites.
That meant Max was at risk of facing his first Christmas in 17 years without a new truck for collection.
Desperate, Gretschel posted her story to Reddit, along with a request.
“I figured that maybe a couple redditors might have had the truck as a kid and would be willing to sell them to me for some extra Christmas cash,” she says.
In her post, she describes Max’s love for the truck and ends with a reasonable call-to-action: “If anyone has one of these in their attics, please throw it on eBay!”
The internet community, however, was about to do her one better.
