Sandcastle Kids: Healing Hearts
Sandcastle Kids, a South Walton 501c3 nonprofit, carries out their healing mission by providing all-expenses-paid vacations to families experiencing a diagnosis of childhood cancer. As you can imagine, these families undergo tremendous mental, emotional, and financial stress daily. Sandcastle Kids looks to ease that burden.
For the Gvozdas family from Columbia, South Carolina, 2019 brought a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia for their second youngest child, Eve.
During the next two and a half years of active treatments, Eve’s mom and dad, Meredith and Scott, called Eve their warrior. At just four years old, she endured hundreds of doses of chemotherapy and steroids, as well as scans, biopsies, and hospital stays over her 832 days of cancer treatment.
Enter Sandcastle Kids.
Working directly with their Pediatric Oncology Social Worker, they were offered a beach trip to South Walton. For this sweet family, even the anticipation and planning for the trip lifted their spirits.
Eve’s mom, Meredith, emphasized the impact Eve’s cancer had made on their entire family. Parents of four, they’d also weathered Eve’s illness during a global pandemic. This required many sacrifices and a lot of missing out – especially for her two oldest kids, Margaret and Mary Scott. The Gvozdases found they had to say no a lot during that time.
The Yes Week
From providing gorgeous beach house accommodations to exciting day excursions like dolphin tours, Sandcastle Kids families are free to just soak it all in and make magical memories. Sandcastle Kids also provides gift cards for expenses, restaurant vouchers, and photography sessions are donated by local photographers.
Eve’s mom Meredith said they referred to their trip as “The Yes Week.” Being a family of six, vacations can be costly, but every treat and whim was possible thanks to this program.
Power of Community
Sandcastle Kids is completely volunteer-based. Because of generous homeowners, donors, and businesses, Sandcastle Kids families leave their worries at home for a week. “My husband and I were floored by the level of generosity we encountered in South Walton”, Gvozdas recalled.
Once all the families scheduled for 2022 complete their trips, Sandcastle Kids will have helped 110 families since its inception in 2015.
Believe in Eve
While the Gvozdases’ Fall 2021 trip was planned months in advance, incredibly Eve was able to take her last chemo pills while on her beach trip. It was a night this family will never forget.
A year later, Eve is doing great. She is five now and loving life as a Kindergartener. The Sandcastle Kids trip demarcated a whole new beginning for their entire family: a fresh start to believe in.
After the Storm
According to Meredith, the end of cancer treatment was almost as emotional as the beginning.
The morning after Eve’s last treatment, Meredith went for a walk on the beach. The sky was gray and ominous, but she was determined to walk out all her complicated thoughts and feelings. Inexplicably her phone battery died, so when a full rainbow appeared she was disheartened to realize she could not capture it.
Noticing her frustration, a stranger offered his phone and said, “I’ve taken some already, please text them to yourself or take some of your own.” Only later did the Gvozdases notice Meredith herself was in his photos. There she was: the mom of a warrior, reflecting upon their storm, walking right beneath the promise of a Gulf Coast rainbow
Recent Stories
Explore and discover all of the Emerald coast.
The Secret History of Eastern Choctawhatchee Bay
There’s an odd cluster of pilings on the eastern edge of the Choctawhatchee Bay. Ever noticed them when driving north across the bridge? These aren’t the remains of an ill-fated attempt at a bridge, but are part of a system capable of detecting low-flying aircraft...
Serving in Seaside for 23 Years and Counting
Bartender Mo Mosely has been greeting patrons and slinging drinks at Bud and Alley’s rooftop bar for 23 years (and counting). Back before Scenic 30A was the bustling, year-round destination that it is today, Bud and Alley’s was the only bar on 30A open late into the...
A Deep Dive with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab
The story begins in 1971 when seven Alabama universities and colleges came together to develop a marine science lab for students on Dauphin Island on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. The overarching idea was to consolidate the disparate marine research and educational resources...