Norwalk child gets dream bedroom
Make-A-Wish surprises with a dinosaur-themed makeover
NORWALK — Fiveyear-old Zabdiel Saravia Valenzuela, of Norwalk, has never had a birthday party. After he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2019, the Make-A-Wish Foundation planned a dinosaur-themed party to celebrate Saravia Valenzuela’s fourth birthday in 2020, but then the coronavirus pandemic began.
A year later, while large gatherings — particularly including immunocompromised people like Saravia Valenzuela — are discouraged, the Make-A-Wish organizers found a lasting compromise to the original birthday party wish.
On Monday, a newly furnished dinosaurthemed bedroom and redecorated living room were revealed to Saravia Valenzuela, his sister Andrea, 9, and his mother Claudia.
The three-member family lives in a threeroom apartment in South Norwalk. Claudia Valenzuela moved to Norwalk from El Salvador in 2014.
While Saravia Valenzuela’s older sister Andrea, 9, speaks both English and Spanish, Zabdiel and Claudia only speak Spanish.
The family arrived home around 5 p.m. Monday afternoon after a doctor appointment to walls decked out in dinosaur decorations and rainforest audio emanating from the bedroom.
Saravia Valenzuela rushed from room to room, clutching newly gifted stuffed dinosaurs, with shouts of “Mira!” meaning, “Look,” in Spanish, directed at his mom and sister as he held up the toys for their viewing.
For Zabdiel and his family, the wish was two years in the making.
“I was very thankful and happy,” Claudia said through a translator. “This is something that can motivate him (Zabdiel). I was sad when we had to cancel the party last year, but kept the faith that something better was coming, and it did.”
New Haven-based interior design company Design by The Jonathans facilitated the
redecoration, conducting some fundraising alongside Make-A-Wish’s designated funds and donating time to the project.
Jonathan Gordon, the company’s co-owner, said Make-A-Wish first reached out to him in January.
“We just got a call one day,” Gordon said. “What ended up happening was the team at Make-A-Wish ended up Googling designers, they looked at our work and liked the work.”
While funds for the redesign of Zabdiel’s bedroom, which he shares with his sister, were supplied by the Make-A-Wish foundation, The Jonathans raised funds to refurnish the living room as well, Gordon said.
Normally, redesigns like the Valenzuela home run upward of $20,000, but the firm is providing the services for about a third of that cost, Gordon said.
The remodel was completed between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday.
The newly furnished room features a whitewash bunkbed, nearly floor-toceiling white closets with neon green doors, unicorns as handles for Andrea’s cabinet and dinosaurs for Zabdiel’s, and plenty of dino-themed toys.
As the family had no television, The Jonathans installed a large flatscreen TV in the kids’ bedroom, LED lights on the ceiling with a color-changing remote and an iPad for the family. A focal point of the room — a large fake tree — snakes up the side of the bunkbeds, with leaves spread across the ceiling and stuffed dinosaurs nestled in the branches that crawled up the wall.
While Zabdiel was not able to vocally express his response to the surprise in English, his grip on the stuffed animals and dinosaur masks he asked his mother and sister to wear reflected his feelings.