NORWALK, Iowa — This holiday season Midwest Family Lending organized a giveaway, called Spread Cheer, where employees would give back to the community for the 25 days of Christmas.
One of the recipients of this giveaway was Peyton Current and her family.
Peyton is a fifth-grader at Lakewood Elementary in Norwalk. Her parent's Suzanne and Brook Current described her as an active child, but that changed this September.
"We took her to urgent care actually quite a few times," Suzanne said. "I think about six in total. Finally, on the last time, the doctor felt her stomach and felt something that was off."
Her mom said doctors took Peyton to the emergency room to run tests.
That's where they discovered a five-pound tumor in her abdomen. It was removed on September 30.
"About a week later they got the results back from oncology that she had ovarian cancer," Suzanne said.
Suzanne noted Peyton has stage three Ovarian Cancer. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy and some weeks has to go to Blank's Children's Hospital Monday through Friday.
Suzanne said this diagnosis has been rough on the family.
However, Brook, Peyton's father mentioned the family is making sure to keep things as normal as possible for Peyton.
"So we've been staying up with her school as much as possible and just trying to get her in touch with her friends," Brook said.
Then the family said one day a man they did not know, heard about Peyton's story and performed a Christmas miracle for them.
It turned out, the man was named Josh Brandt, and he worked for Midwest Family Lending. He gave the family a thousand dollar check.
"With the gift from Josh, we decided to go and buy Peyton a nicer gift that she was asking for for Christmas," Brook said.
The gift the parents decided to get for Peyton was a computer. It's to help her better keep in touch with her friends and family while she's at home, isolated, to stay safe.
Brook noted some of Peyton's bills from her treatments and doctors have just begun to come in and they expect them to be costly. However, instead of keeping all of the money they were gifted, they gifted half of it to another family with a child also battling cancer.
The Director of Midwest Family Lending, Katie McIntyre, said the gift from Josh was just one of many the company gave out to the community this year.
"2020 has been to say the understatement of the year, really difficult for a lot of people," McIntyre said. "So we wanted to be able to make the season a little bit brighter and each of our 25 employees has selected one of these organizations or families to give back to, a thousand dollars apiece."
Both Brook and Suzanne said the random act of kindness they received this holiday season is one they treasure.
Peyton's parents have set up a page dedicated to keeping people updated on her well being, you can keep up with her here. They also have a page where anyone can donate to help with the cost of bills for treatments, you can click here for that page.