Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
HEBER — After years of transplants and treatments and moving from the Philippines to Heber for better medical treatment, the members of the Dizon family were told that their 15-year-old son’s leukemia was back and no longer treatable.
The mother, Eloisa Dizon, quit her job in order to take care of her son. Things became tight for the one-income family with the father working at Walmart.
After finding out that their son was sick again, they decided to use every moment they had to make it fun.
“We were thinking of something fun to do,” Eloisa Dizon said, “and it just so happened that I thought of taking a train ride.”
The family had never ridden a train before. “Since the first time we came here, we wanted to take a train trip.”
The family decided to contact the staff of the Heber Valley Historic Railroad to get a ride as soon as they could. ‘We wanted to do it soon and not have to wait,” Dizon said. But her neighbor had already started planning a trip.
After Dizon had texted her neighbor, Jennifer Caldwell, and asked about the Heber train, Caldwell reached out to Mark Nelson, the executive director of the Heber Valley Historic Railroad. Nelson was more than willing to help the family get a ride on the train, and gave all 15 family members and friends a free Heber train ride.
“They had health challenges and financial challenges and they wanted to ride the train. How can we say no?” Nelson said.
“When I was told it was not only us but they extended to more than the number of who I thought could go, it was just so touching,” Dizon told KSL.com. “We just can’t forget that experience.”
Page Two:
The Dizons' neighbor, Caldwell, was able to get a stranger to take pictures of the experience.
“People that we don’t know, that don’t even know us, they were able to give that kind of fun to us and especially to my son,” Dizon said.
But this was not the first time the Heber Valley Historic Railroad had done something like this.
“We do this a lot,” Nelson explained. “On my watch, we do this a lot. I think trains, and our train in particular, is kind of a cool, magical thing. In the last 12 months we have done this many times, and we love doing it, it is not a burden at all. We have had a few times where we have to carry the people onto the train because they are in the wheelchair, and we can’t put a wheelchair on the train, so we have to carry them on the train, and that’s really not a burden, it’s an honor.”
Nelson was able to get involved in the act of kindness and was the host of the train ride.
“It’s not us, it’s the train itself,” he explained. “I think trains are magical in some way. Most people in the West have never ridden a train before. They may have ridden the Frontrunner or something like that, but they have never ridden an old train, and this is a train that is over 100 years old. It is slow and it rattles and we on board try to add an old-fashioned experience, and that is just magical to some people. Our tag line at the railroad is ‘great experiences await.’ That’s what riding on the train is for most people, it is just a fun, nostalgic cool thing to ride an old train.”
For the Dizon family, it was an act of kindness that comforted them in the middle of hard times.
“We want to extend our thank-you to Mark and the management. We are so grateful that the management and the people out there were able to do that.”
An online fundraiser has been set up on behalf of the Dizon family.
*KSL.com
Kailey McBride is a student at BYU-Idaho with a major in English and an emphasis in professional writing. Email: mcbridekailey@yahoo.com.
