It is a strange thing to see a jet black stretch limousine cruise down State Road 68 north toward Velarde.
It is even stranger to see the whale slowly take a hairpin turn onto some dusty county road. To us perhaps, but that was just the beginning of 4-year-old Alcalde Pre-K student Mark Martinez’s fantastical journey on Oct. 18.
Mark has cancer, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia to be exact, but that is not what this is about. If anything, his diagnosis was simply a means to the perfect day, as could only come from the mind of a 4-year-old.
The day was simply about a child, a few rounds of bowling, a stretch limo and an outdoor playset.
The seeds for Mark’s adventures on Oct. 18 were sewn with his initial diagnosis on Aug. 22, 2017. For the past year his parents Matthew and Victoria Martinez, along with the rest of his family, have been seeing him through his treatments and recovery. It is during this time that Mark caught the eyes of the Child Life Department at the University of New Mexico Children’s Hospital.
The Department, having closely worked beside Mark and his family, decided that, given his spirit, that he and his family deserved a surprise, an escape of sorts, so they contacted the Roc Solid Foundation.
The Foundation, operating out of Chesapeake, Va., is a non-profit that simply builds hope for every child and family facing pediatric cancer, according to its website. The operative word there is build. Which is exactly what they did, with the assistance of local Wienerschnitzel franchisees and volunteers along with the Los Angeles-based parent company of Weinerschnitzel the Gelardi Group, built Mark a playset.
“We partner with Wienerschnitzel and they tell us what locations that they would like to be in,” Megan Dehond, program coordinator for Roc Solid, said. “From there, we identify local children’s hospitals and we reach out to the child life specialists or the social workers on the pediatric, hematology and oncology floor, and then they identify families.”
Karen Galardi, head of corporate and community relations and giving for the Group, has been involved in similar projects throughout the West Coast and southwest.
“This is the third year that we have been working with Roc Solid, and our first time working with the Foundation in New Mexico,” she said. “We sponsor a lot of their builds, we have done 17 builds in the southwest and west coast so far this year.”
Aside from building the playset, the Group and Foundation set up an array of distractions to keep Mark busy while the team of 16 local and regional franchise volunteers met in the early hours to construct the playset before he returned.
Mark’s idea of a perfect day was to have breakfast, partake in a little bowling and ride around in a stretch limo for four hours, Galardi said.
At around noon, upon finishing their project, the 16 do-gooders gathered around the periphery of the newly-constructed playset as word spread of the limo slowly rounding the corner and approaching the driveway.
Upon arrival, Mark, his parents, cousins and other family members flooded out of the limo and up the gravel driveway toward the front yard. The unsuspecting Mark was, in a fashion meant for royalty, bundled up in a blanket by his father, as they tried to stretch out the moments before the big reveal for as long as they could.
Mark beamed as the blanket was pulled down and he laid eyes on his new set for the first time, amid a sea of applause and shouts of joy from volunteers and family alike. But Mark, like all 4-year-olds, had little time to ponder the events that led up to his special Thursday, all he knew and needed to know was that there was a slide, kitchen and swing set.
“It is a scary thing when you hear that your child has cancer,” Victoria Martinez said. “But through this whole journey, we have been able to see how much we have been blessed with the wonderful care team we have at the hospital, the organizations that have given back to our family and hearing that he was nominated by a group at the hospital to receive this from Roc Solid makes us proud as parents that we are doing something right, just seeing his spirit and determination in beating cancer, it is inspiring and encouraging to all of us.”
Mark’s uncle and godfather, Danny Sandoval Jr., joined him and myriad cousins and friends as they broke the new set in.
“I’m very excited, very emotional, it is great the foundation that did this for him and everybody that came out, it’s great,” Sandoval said. “He has some bad days, but most days he is just a happy kid.”
After the initial revelry of the playground, the family and hungry volunteers sat down to lunch, which was provided by local franchisees Craig and Monica Wood, while Mark and his friends and family continued to play on, without a worry in the world, and that was the point all along, nothing, not even cancer, can stand in the way of a kid and playground.