Girl, 11, turns lemons into lemonade for mom
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 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 SunNews.
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 kidney and her pancreas.
The news was difficult considering Paloma’s mother received the same diagnosis about a year earlier and had a kidney transplant.
“My mom struggled a lot because she didn’t have the money to go (to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona),” she says, “and so I decided, why not make a lemonade stand? I can’t work so it’s really hard for us.”
Paloma says 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. She set up her stand the following day, outside her family’s home, and Paloma advertised her daughter’s cause on social media.
But then, “I was contacted by Fox News and they ran the story on her,” Paloma says, “and then last week, ABC News came.”
Other media, including The Associated Press, Univision and The Guardian, have run stories.
Nemiah and Paloma started a GoFundMe campaign to help pay expenses for Paloma’s upcoming visit to the Mayo Clinic at the end of this month. To date, nearly $4,000 has been donated.
“We want to say thank you to the community,” Paloma says, “because you guys are making this possible. You helping my little girl feel, you know, empowered that she’s able to do something for other people.”