Lemonade stand has higher purpose

Las Cruces girl is helping fund mom’s transplant care

LAS CRUCES — Nemiah Martinez, 11, had only one goal in mind when she started a lemonade stand five weeks ago in Las Cruces: Raise enough money to help her mother travel to Arizona, where she would start the preliminary tests of receiving a double transplant to save her life.

But the fourth-grader never imagined raising more than $40. So it was almost unfathomable when she raised several hundred dollars over four weekends and nearly $4,000 over 20 days through a related GoFundMe campaign.

“We never in a million years thought that it would be this much — that is a lot of money,” Nemiah’s mother, Paloma, told the Sun-News.

Saturday marked Nemiah’s fifth consecutive weekend selling her homemade lemonade.

Nemiah’s decision to start raising money came months after doctors diagnosed her mother with end-stage renal disease in May 2017. Doctors told Paloma she would need a double transplant to replace a failing kidney and her pancreas. Since then, she’s been diagnosed with gastric paralysis and pancreatitis, and suffered a mini-stroke in March.

The news was heartbreaking for Paloma and her two daughters. It was especially difficult considering Paloma’s mother received the same diagnosis about a year earlier and underwent a kidney transplant. However, Nemiah used her mother’s diagnosis as a call to action — and she turned life’s lemons into lemonade, of course.

“My mom struggled a lot of because she didn’t have to money to go (to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona),” she said, “and so I decided, Why not make a lemonade stand? I can’t work so it’s really hard for us.”

Paloma admitted she first brushed off the idea, but Nemiah persisted until one day, in early April, she received her mother’s blessing to start a lemonade stand, her first business venture. So, she set up a stand in front of a Las Cruces thrift store operated by her aunt, and had a handful of customers that first day, making roughly $7.

It was by no means an immediate success — until the last customer of the day handed a $100 bill to Nemiah. Buoyed by the generous donation, she set up her stand the following day, this time outside her family’s home, and Paloma advertised her daughter’s cause on social media. They had a much greater turnout, Paloma said.

“We made another $100,” she said. It was enough for the motherdaughter duo to continue their efforts the following Saturday.

But what happened next was totally expected, Paloma said.

“I was contacted by Fox News and they ran the story on her,” she said, “and then last week, ABC News came and they picked up the story.”

And it wasn’t just Fox and ABC that produced segments on Nemiah. Other media organizations, including the Associated Press, Univision, The Guardian and others, have run pieces on Nemiah.

“Just seeing how many people have retweeted and shared her story is just amazing,” Paloma said, “especially for us being in a small city.”

Also during this time, Nemiah and Paloma started a GoFundMe campaign to help pay expenses related to Paloma’s upcoming visit to the Mayo Clinic at the end of this month. To date, nearly $4,000 has been donated to the campaign.

Nemiah’s lemonade is different from most other types. She offers three different types — strawberry, cucumber and lemon — and her lemonades are not made with premade mixes. They start with fresh fruit purée and juice, and are made with real sugar, she said.

She and her grandmother make the lemonades together since they involve simmering over a stove. “We put water in a pan, then we put the sugar and let it boil, to make the syrup,” she said. “So I get a little bit [of] help from my grandmother — but for the rest, I do it myself.”

Nemiah sells her lemonade for $1.50 per glass and gives each customer a free sweet (like cupcakes or cookies).

Paloma said her daughter will stop selling lemonade just before her appointment at the clinic in Arizona. While at the clinic, Paloma will undergo a series of medical tests in the hopes of getting placed on the national transplant registry.

Paloma said she is proud of her daughter and her motivation to help others in difficult times. She also is thankful for the support they’ve received from the community.

“We never expected to get to this point,” she said. “We want to say thank you to the community because you guys are making this possible.”