Four-year old with heart defect gets monster truck visit

Alex Homar, “Gater,” rolled his miniature monster truck in the dirt waiting for the real one to roll into his neighborhood on Jan. 5, as friends, family and preschool classmates waited in similar eager anticipation.

“A real monster truck is coming to the house, and it’s Big Foot!” Gater exclaimed.

Gater has hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a rare congenital heart defect where the left heart ventricle is severely underdeveloped.

“It’s basically just half a heart, so it’s non-compatible with life,” his mom, Brynn Homar, said. “He’s had to go through four open heart surgeries, multiple hospital stays, infection and all kinds of stuff. And usually these kids don’t live very long lives.”

At first when people hear Gater is sick, people tell her, “oh that’s tough,” Homar said. And she admits that when she is going through it, it isn’t fun. “But he has so much life,” she said with a quick smile.

Homar’s neighbor, Natasha Woodside, a volunteer for the Make-a-Wish Foundation, encouraged her to consider making a wish, but Homar didn’t think they could do something like that.

“I was worried that, number one, he’d be too sick after his surgery. And number two, that he was so young. We wouldn’t want to influence him as parents. We wanted it to be his heartfelt wish,” Homar said.

Then the doctor said, why don’t you do the Make-a-Wish before his surgery?

So last August, the Make-a-Wish Foundation granted him a wish for a family trip to Disneyworld. And because they continue to support families for five years after, they had his family fill out a profile.

“They knew he liked cars and trucks, and so they sent a monster truck out to our house,” Homar said. “We were floored when we got the news because it’s so overwhelming already how much they did for you. And then to have this on top of that - it’s just such an amazing program.”

The Make-a-Wish Foundation grants wishes for children who have life-threatening, but not necessarily terminal, medical conditions. Recipients are between the ages of two and a half and 18.

They try to include enhancements or fun ways to tell the child their wish has been granted, such as having a marching band go to the child’s house. The Big Foot visit was an add-on thanks to the promoters of a Monster Truck event held at West Valley City’s Maverik Center on Jan. 6-7. The promoters always visit Make-A-Wish families when they roll into a city.

“I just think these little kids that have these hurdles to go through are just really special kids,” Woodside said. “You don’t really think it’s fair or understand why, but they are really unique individuals. They are compassionate and empathetic. And the siblings of these kids are just changed in a lot of ways for the better.”