Adam Wolf, a 12-year-old with cerebral palsy, was stunned when Randi Grossman, West Coast director of the Chai Lifeline, called to tell him that the organization would pay for him to go to the Super Bowl.
“He said, ‘Are you kidding me? This is amazing,’” Wolf’s mother, Ali Wolf, said.
“And then he said, ‘Mommy, I’m going to the Super Bowl.’”
Ali Wolf said that the news has bolstered her son’s spirits. Adam, who has never been to a football game before, is having surgery on his left hand in late-February and has missed a lot of school to go to doctor’s appointments.
“Adam has been going through a lot, and we knew this would be a trip of a lifetime for him,” Chai Lifeline’s Grossman said.
“We’d like to choose everyone, but obviously we’re limited with the number of tickets we get,” she added.
Adam is one of quadruplets in a family with seven children in Irvine and has attended Camp Simcha Special in New York the past two summers. The camp, designed for kids with chronic or genetic illnesses, is a program of Chai Lifeline, which provides a variety of services for seriously ill children.
He is going to the game with a counselor from Camp Simcha Special, Shlomo Platschek. Chai Lifeline, which received a donation from LH Financial Services to help pay for Adam’s trip, is covering Platschek’s costs too.
After Platschek, a 19-year-old from Far Rockaway, N.Y., and Adam met at camp, the two became close.
Platschek said that nowadays, he and Adam talk on the phone several times everyday.
“He’s like a little brother to me,” Platschek said.
The Super Bowl is Sunday, Feb. 6. Adam is rooting for the Green Bay Packers, who are playing the Pittsburgh Steelers.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.