Thank You Project works its way to area church
Kellie Haddock will never forget the night she almost lost her son Eli. It was Oct. 31, 2004.
"The sun was just beginning to set. And we were listening to Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," and that was the last thing I remember," she said. "The next thing I remember is looking at a gold cross around someone's neck. Somebody else was holding my baby, and for some reason we were in the median. I didn't know what was going on. A helicopter pilot came up to me and said, "You're going to get to ride in a helicopter," and I thought, "Well, that's great. I've always wanted to ride in a helicopter." He looked at me and said, "You haven't always wanted to ride in one of these helicopters.' "
The next thing she knew, Haddock was being wheeled in one direction down a Florida hospital hall and her 14-week-old baby in another.
"It was about this time that I realized I hadn't seen my husband," she said.
Nobody had any answers, so she thought his injuries must have been mild enough he had been taken by ambulance to a closer hospital.
A hospital chaplain soon shattered that illusion.
"She looked at me and said, 'Your husband was killed instantly in the car accident,' " Haddock said. "One never premeditates what they're going to say when they hear the worst news of their life. And I certainly never imagined someone would tell me that. So what I said back to her surprised me probably as much as it surprised her. I looked at her and I said, "God is good, and Jesus is Lord.' "
Haddock's husband was gone, but her son lived. And five years later, she found love again on "the other side of tragedy" and married Ted Haddock.
Ten years after the accident, Kellie Haddock came up with the Thank You Project, a plan to express gratitude to all the first responders and medical professionals who had helped save her son's life.
"We were watching Eli run and play and just enjoying his health and the fact that he can run and play, and we began realizing that he didn't get this way on his own, that there were people that showed up for work and did a good job," Haddock said. "And then you realize that these people probably have no idea how important what they did that day was for our little boy. And that if they didn't come to work that day, he might not be here. And so we realized we needed to find these people and tell them the rest of Eli's story and tell them thank you."
Haddock said the biggest surprise was that as she tracked down caregivers, more than 25 in all, she found that most had never been thanked before.
"They'd all done their jobs at least 10 years and some 20 or more years," she said.
Representatives of Orlando's Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children found out about the project and asked the Haddocks if they could send a film team along to capture their efforts. The video was posted on YouTube and has gone viral with features in news publications around the world.
The "Today" show ran a story that aired on Thanksgiving right before the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
"It's estimated that, since Thanksgiving, over 20 million people have seen our story," Haddock said.
It was through the story that North Las Vegas residents Jason and Kelli Andino reconnected with Haddock, a high school classmate.
"We went to high school together in Jacksonville, Fla., and had lost touch," Jason Andino said.
When Andino found out about the project, he said he was moved by what Haddock was doing.
"The way she tells it so unabashedly, so openly, and she doesn't dance around the bad stuff ... I don't know that I could be so gracious."
Andino felt Haddock's message of gratitude and triumph after tragedy was important enough to share, so he convinced her to travel from her home in Florida to Community Lutheran Church, 3720 E. Tropicana Ave., where he serves as a worship leader, to share her story and her music in a free community concert July 12.
"The church was very supportive," Jason Andino said. "We didn't do this ourselves. We got teams together, found the money and made it work."
Because the guest concert worked out, Andino is already thinking of bringing in another guest artist, this one with even a closer personal connection: his brother, David, a Las Vegas-raised performer who is traveling with the Broadway tour of "Cinderella."
— To reach View contributing reporter Ginger Meurer, email gmeurer@viewnews.com. Find her on Twitter: @gingermmm.
