What do you do if you get a text from a wrong number? Some people completely ignore it and move on with their lives. Others decided to be super polite and explain that there must have been some kind of mix up. And then there are those with extra time on their hands who like to mess around with the sender. After all, they don’t really know who is on the other end of the text! But Tony Wood was sitting at home one day with his kids when he got an unusual text on his phone.
Having recently attained his realtor’s license, he didn’t think much of it as he anticipated receiving calls and texts from unknown numbers with his profession. They had recently moved to the area, and Wood figured his phone number was a recycled number because this wasn’t the first wrong number he had received. But when he opened up the text, he saw it was from a young woman in a formal dress asking for an opinion on how it looked. This could have gone a couple of ways.
He could have been creepy and gone that direction, but this dad was no weirdo. He could have ignored it, which would have been fine, but he didn’t do that either. Seeing Syd in that dress, he knew that it was probably being purchased for a very important occasion. After all, one doesn’t walk around the grocery store or the gym dressed up in formal attire. So instead of being a creeper or ignoring her, he decided it was time to spread some happiness, and that’s just what he did.
He gathered his kids together and showed them the picture and asked them for their opinion, which was overwhelmingly that she looked gorgeous. So he convinced them to squeeze together to fit in the picture — a challenge in and of itself with five young children — and them gave the two thumbs up. He snapped the picture and as you can see, it came out perfectly. Off it was sent! But that isn’t the end of the story.
Wood didn’t initially get a reply back and didn’t think much of it. But a couple of weeks later, a friend posted screenshots of this tweet from Syd’s friend, Mandi Miller, that was quickly going viral and that included his children and texts! The second he saw the picture he knew what it was and thought, “Oh, this is cool! The kids are Twitter famous!” Wood was thrilled it was gaining traction and thought, “Hey, I’m gonna say hello!”
So Wood tweeted a hello response telling Mandi introducing himself and letting her know how he found out about the tweet. This would be a great story even if ended right here. After all, how often do people reply to wrong-number texts and have a pleasant exchange? Not all that often, and no disrespect, but especially when teenagers are involved. Most couldn’t care less about conversing with some strange adult. But that’s just the start of the story.
What nobody knew looking at that picture of his family was that someone was missing — his son Kaizler, who was with his mom Rachel at his chemo clinic, where he is currently being treated for Leukemia. Kaizler was diagnosed in 2015. According to Wood, he was acting lethargic and he had a temperature off and on. When they took him to his primary care physician, she could tell it wasn’t an ear infection and he tested negative for the flu, so she requested blood work immediately
They soon got a call a little after that saying that we needed to take him to the hospital for labs because they thought he was anemic. “A couple hours after that, the hospital called and advised us to take him to Children’s Mercy ASAP,” Wood said. “They told us that he either had a severe viral infection, or he had Leukemia. We have never prayed so hard for a severe viral infection in our lives.” But then they got the results…
The day before Christmas Eve, they were given the news that no parent wants to hear — that their little boy has Leukemia. “There have been some major trials since then,” Wood said. “Several bouts of pneumonia, hospitalizations due to low IGG levels, silent seizures which led to him being life-flighted back in 2016. Through it all though, we know God is with us. He has shown himself to us on several occasions, and we trust that He will pull us through.” Little did he know what was about to happen next.
A stranger on Twitter — illuminaughty — joined the Prayers for Kaizler Facebook group and took the initiative to tweet out the GoFundMe link set up to help the family with their medical expenses. “A couple people, including illuminaughty, had asked for a thumbs up from Kaizler,” Wood said. “So, I thanked him for his consideration and posted a picture of Kaizler giving a thumbs up.” And how adorable does he look in that picture? This is when things start to get really good.
See that smiling face up there? It’s because the tweet really started to take off, which didn’t initially mean that much to the kids. “We told the kids they were Twitter famous and, while they thought that was cool, we didn’t get a big response mostly because they don’t exactly know what Twitter is,” Wood said. “The bigger kids have heard of it, but we try to keep them limited on things like social media. What really shocked us was the growth of our GoFundMe account.”
Not only were people leaving messages of support — complete strangers, mind you — but they were also donating their own money to help out the family. “Donations started coming in and my wife and I were amazed at people’s generosity,” Wood said. “I remember tweeting about how the GoFundMe had received an extra $1,000! We were so excited — that $1,000 was going to be a BIG deal for us in our current situation.” But that was just the beginning.
In about 24 hours, people had more than doubled what they had received in the last two years combined. Wood took to the Facebook page to let everyone know how they had met and exceeded their goal of $10,000. “Our minds were blown, tears had been shed more than once,” Wood said. And as of this writing right now, the fund currently sits at more than $56,000! To say they’re overwhelmed would be an understatement.
“I can’t even begin to tell you what this means to us, what this means for us,” he told Love What Matters. “We have an amazing support of friends and family. The prayers have been non-stop, people have given their time and energy to help us in whatever ways they can. I am humbled by the generosity and outpouring of love we have received by the people we know, and by people we’ve never even met.”
Mom Rachel is also overwhelmed by the reaction that started with just one wrong-number tweet. “It is so refreshing to be reminded that there are good people in the world who still care about others and are quick to be generous and kind to others,” she told Bored Panda. “I would also like to thank EVERYONE from the bottom of my heart for all the kind words, all the prayers, all the donations, all the love and support. We honestly would never have been able to make it this far in our journey without every single one of you!” Kaisler still has a year of treatments ahead of him, but given his fighting spirit — and all this love and support — there’s no doubt he will come out on top!