WHEN WISHES COME TRUE
Make-a-Wish gives puppy to boy fighting leukemia
Cameron Neidigk watches as her son Mikey, 5, and daughter Elly, 7, meet Archie, a goldendoodle puppy delivered to Mikey on Tuesday during an event arranged by Make-a-Wish New Mexico. Mikey is battling leukemia. Read the story on
Among 5-year-old Mikey Neidigk’s favorite things are “Spider-Man,” “Star Wars” characters and goldendoodle puppies.
On Tuesday, Mikey, who is battling leukemia, got all three when his superheroes presented him with a 9-week-old goldendoodle puppy in an event arranged by Make-a-Wish New Mexico.
The surprise delivery of the dog, a hybrid between a golden retriever and a poodle, came at the conclusion of a driveby parade in which friends drove past the family’s Albuquerque home and dropped doggie supplies into a basket in preparation for the arrival of the animal — even though Mikey and his 7-year-old sister, Elly, were told one of the dogs had not yet been located for adoption.
“Originally when Mikey came to us, he thought about a Disney World wish, but because of COVID and the inability to travel and things going on with his diagnosis, it wasn’t possible,” said Sara Lister, president and CEO of Make-a-Wish New Mexico.
“But one of the things he’s always wanted was a goldendoodle puppy, and he was very specific that he wanted it to be a boy, and he wanted to name it Archie, and he wanted it to have blond hair,” Lister said.
The local Make-a-Wish folks quickly began the search for such a puppy. In what might be seen as a moment of divine serendipity, a sister chapter in Syracuse, New York, which had been working with a
goldendoodle breeder for a child there, learned that the child no longer wanted the animal, preferring a different pet instead.
“So this puppy became available, and we asked if we could have it,” Lister said.
A Make-a-Wish staff member from New Mexico flew to New York to bring the newly named Archie to the Land of Enchantment and his new home with the Neidigk family.
Mikey was diagnosed with leukemia three years ago “and has been through a ton,” said his mother, Cameron Neidigk. He was most recently released from a hospital last Friday.
In April 2019, his sister Elly, then 6, donated bone marrow to her brother. “He relapsed about two weeks before Christmas. We went back to the hospital in Denver in March and he got a second bone marrow transplant, this one from a cord blood donor in the Midwest. He was only four months out when he relapsed again,” said his mom, a former grade school teacher.
“Elly has been affected by this in a significant way so we really want Archie to be for both kids,” Neidigk said.
With Mikey’s last relapse, Neidigk said, she and her husband, Nathan Neidigk, a math teacher at Volcano Vista High School, “are not really sure what’s going to happen.”
Far more certain, she said, was that Archie’s arrival was going to make both children “ecstatic,” and no doubt lead to “some happy tears.”