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PROVO — After hearing about a campaign to give valentines to a dying Provo girl, the Provo City Power employees banded together to give her a memorable experience for Valentine’s Day.
Provo City Power public relations officer Kat Linford said employee Matt Ramos saw a KSL.com article about Provo resident Abigail Faul who was born with Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome, a condition in which the right side structures of the heart are underdeveloped. As a result, Faul has undergone four open heart surgeries and was sent home on hospice care in December.
Ramos decided to join the campaign of sending valentines to Faul and bought a giant Valentine’s Day card and passed it around the office for people to sign.
“I was so touched by it that he would just take it upon himself and do that,” Linford said. “When he came back to pick it up (to mail it,) I said, ‘Let’s go deliver it. Let’s go make it a big deal.’ ”
Linford said around 35 Provo City Power officials drove to the Faul family home Thursday afternoon to present the card to the 5-year-old. The employees took around 10 company trucks and offered Faul and her siblings a ride in the bucket truck.
During one of Faul’s surgeries, her vocal cords were nicked and damaged so she can’t speak. However, Lindford said she could see the girl’s excitement when they were being raised in the bucket.
“Abigail wasn’t saying anything, but she was looking over the bucket and looking down and seemed like she was trying to take it all in,” Linford said. “When I took up Lilith (Abigail’s twin,) she wasn’t speaking, but she was giggling. I asked if she wanted to go up higher and she just kind of yelped in excitement.”
Along with giving Faul and her sister a ride in the bucket truck, the employees also gave her the valentine as well as other holiday trinkets and candy. Linford said Abigail’s mother, Rachel Faul, was very gracious and appreciative of the gesture, but Linford felt that she and her co-workers were equally blessed by the experience.
“I was so personally touched,” Linford said. “Last night when I got back to the office after all of this, I had people saying, ‘That was so amazing. Thank you so much.’ It just puts life into perspective. There is a human heart behind big corporations… We are human. We may be a company. We may be a municipal, but there are people behind it. There’s a heart behind it.”
