Chika’s story

How a little angel from Haiti — with an incurable disease — captured hearts, changed lives and made us a family

She was born three days before Haiti’s massive earthquake in 2010.

But life would throw even bigger challenges at the brave and upbeat Medjerda “Chika” Jeune. Her mother would die giving birth to a baby brother. Her family was scattered.

Then, two years ago this month, Chika’s mouth and eye drooped, and a Haitian neurologist, upon examining a brain scan, concluded, “Whatever this is, there is no one in Haiti who can help her.” Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom, who operates the Have Faith Haiti orphanage where Chika lived, brought her to America.

But when University of Michigan doctors diagnosed her with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a rare and always fatal brain tumor, the world shifted for Chika, Albom and his wife, Janine. They became a medical combat unit, traveling the world in search of a cure for the incurable. Read Chika’s story today at freep.com/chika

JENNIFER HAMBRICK Medjerda “Chika” Jeune was born in 2010. She died on April 7.