A kind college student helped Ella go from her tiny wheelchair to a motorized Hello Kitty car!

Tara Russell prayed for a way her paralyzed daughter could zip around without her wheelchair—and, thanks to a caring college student, Ella now can!

Every time she noticed the two battery-powered kiddie cars in her Springdale, Pennsylvania, garage, Tara Russell felt like crying. It was yet another reminder that, unlike her four-year-old sister, Ava, three-year-old Ella would never get to drive hers.

Ella had been only 18 months old when doctors discovered a life-threatening tumor on her spinal cord. Surgery and chemotherapy blessedly saved her life, but the treatment had left her unable to use her legs.

“This makes it all too real. And forever,” Tara whispered sadly to her husband, Nathan, the day a tiny neon-pink wheelchair was delivered. Yet Ella was thrilled.

As the car began to roll, Ella’s face lit up!

“Watch out! Here comes my push-push!” Ella announced, thrilled she no longer had to be carried to the sandbox and wouldn’t have to ride in the cart at the grocery store but could roll herself along.

Still, one thing Ella longed to do that she couldn’t was ride by herself in her Hello Kitty car. She could sit in the back of Ava’s Mini Cooper for a ride, but . . . “I want to do it myself!” Ella would sigh. But there was just no way she could operate the foot pedals.

Eventually, the toy cars frustrated Ella so much that Tara put them away. It wasn’t fair to Ava. But with everything she had survived and the limitations she had to endure . . . almost nothing seemed fair for Ella.

Then one day, something amazing happened: Ella’s physical therapist told Tara she’d been contacted by the director of the Physical Therapy Department at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. A student named Erin Gaffney had started a chapter of Go Baby Go, a club where PT students would modify toy cars for kids with mobility issues.

“That would be a dream come true for Ella!” Tara marveled.

That night, Tara told Nathan, “It’s time to take the girls’ cars out!” And soon she was bringing Ella and her Hello Kitty car to the college where Erin and a group of her classmates promised to try to help.

The students didn’t have a lot of mechanical experience, but they were eager to learn. Ella and Ava watched, their excitement growing as the team removed the “gas” pedal from the Hello Kitty car, then rewired the system so it could be controlled by hand.

“Why don’t you get in and show us how far you can reach?” Erin asked Ella.

This time, Ava was on the passenger side as Tara helped Ella into the driver’s seat. The team positioned the hand controls so Ella could reach them without losing control of the steering wheel, then mounted the unit securely. “Ready?” they asked. “Ready!” Ella pronounced.

When Erin showed her how she could make the car go on her own, Ella pressed the hand pedal. And as the car began to roll, Ella’s face lit up—and Tara burst into tears.

Wrapping her arms around Erin, she cried, “I don’t know how to thank you!”

But for Erin and her fellow “auto mechanics,” Ella’s smile was thanks enough.

“I got involved with Go Baby Go because I know how important it is for kids with mobility issues to have some independence,” she explains. “But seeing the joy we’d brought Ella . . . that was the real reward!” Today, as Ella rides around the yard all by herself, Tara knows the car has not only boosted her little girl’s self-confidence, but also made her own heart soar with hope. “If something like this can be done now, I can only imagine all the advancements and miracles the future may hold. Who knows? Maybe Ella will even grow up to be a racecar driver!” she beams. “For now, it allows Ella not to be ‘Ella who is paralyzed,’ but just a regular little girl driving her pink Hello Kitty car. And that is an incredible gift to me!”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” English proverb