THE NEWSPAPER AT THE HEART & SOUL OF OUR COMMUNITY
WEEKEND EDITION DECEMBER 6,2015 WWW.ARLINGTONTIMES.COM JUNE 8, 2014 WWW.ARLINGTONTIMES.COM 75¢ 75¢
Herald THE SUNDAY
An Edition of
Helping hands hobby BY KIRK BOXLEITNER kboxleitner@marysvilleglobe.com
Sports: Short Athlete of Week looked up to by others. Page 10.
Theater:
Lakewood brings back Christmas classic play. Page 9.
ARLINGTON — What became a worldwide community devoted to supplying people with prosthetic limbs started out as an Arlington dad’s nerdy hobby. Ivan Owen posted a video on YouTube about the giant puppet hand he’d created for a monster suit that was worn at science fiction and fantasy convention Norwescon in 2011. A carpenter in South Africa, who’d lost four fingers due to his work, emailed Owen in December of that year, to ask if he could make a replacement finger for him. “He just wanted a trigger finger to pull on his drill,” said Owen, who spent nearly a year correspondKirk Boxleitner/Staff Photo
SEE HAND, PAGE 2
Local family seeks Lots of Luvs for Layla
INDEX BUSINESS
BY STEVE POWELL spowell@marysvilleglobe.com
19
CLASSIFIED ADS 22-24 LEGALS
2
OPINION
4-5
SPORTS
9-10
WORSHIP
7
Vol. 126, No. 16
Courtesy Photo
Layla Beckstrand
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Torrae Owen shows how the prosthetic hand can be used to pick up an apple.
MARYSVILLE – The first time Jessica Beckstrand saw her husband Mike cry was when they found out their 1 1/2-year-old daughter Layla had Stage 4 cancer and a 50-50 chance of survival. The second time she saw him in tears was a few weeks later when they saw a gofundme.com account set up by her sister had collected $6,000 from dozens of donors, many of them strangers, in just three days. “We just started bawling,” Jessica said. “I have no idea who half these people are.” She said she knew a lot of relatives
out of state would want to help but not the amount of friends of friends of friends. “It’s overwhelming,” she said. “We expected it from family but not anyone else.” Jessica said the medical community has been brutally honest about the situation. “We still have to pay for everything no matter what the outcome,” she said. Finding out Mike first noticed there was a problem when he was changing Layla’s diaper and noticed one side of her body was lower than the other. A doctor felt around and something was not right; the area was too big near her liver. A
mass was found using an ultrasound, and she was rushed to the emergency room at Seattle Children’s Hospital. A tumor was found in her belly, and they were told Layla had Stage 4 neuroblastoma cancer in her adrenal glands. Because there are two such glands, the Beckstrands hope Layla can eventually have surgery removing one, and “the other one can make up for the loss,” Jessica said. To reach that point, little Layla has to go through five rounds of chemotherapy. Each round every three weeks for four months she will be in the hospital for five days. She will have two half-hour treatments most of those SEE LUV, PAGE 2