Family pays it forward for girl in need of a heart transplant

Presque Isle — When Andrew McGuire suffered from a heart attack during a game of pick up basketball, members of the community rushed to his side and helped support him and his family, showering them with love and support.

Almost one year later, the McGuire family took that experience as inspiration to pay it forward.

“One day, I remember coming back from the hospital and having a conversation with our kids about what a difference that made to us and how much it meant to them and in the future that we’d want to do something within our community,” said Michele McGuire.

They created a Facebook page called ‘Our Grateful Table’ where they give back to others in different ways. Their latest project is raising funds for Violet McLaren, a young girl from Alpena in need of a heart transplant.

“We have a daughter that goes to a college out of state and one of the things that the mom in their town does is this online auction,” said Michele. “Every once and awhile they’ll auction off a basket and the money that they raise, they put towards they put toward the food pantry or some other cause that they’re supporting at the time, so then when I saw that, it kind of triggered the idea.”

The McGuires have been collecting donations and items from the community and putting together baskets. The whole family has aided in the assembly of these online auction items.

“I helped out by lifting the gifts and stuff like that,” said Arik McGuire.

“I’ll drop them off to people sometimes,” said Delaney McGuire.

“With all of the various donations we get, it’s kind of hard to figure out what basket we want to put which things in, so we help out a lot with that,” said Malley McGuire.

They then auction off those baskets for folks to bid on. The family still has quite a few baskets to auction off, each with items from the community, a community that gave back to them, and now they hope to return the favor for Violet.

Each day a new basket is posted on their Facebook page ‘Our Grateful Table.’ You can comment your bid. The bidding starts at 9:00 a.m. and ends at 9:00 p.m.
This daily basket auction runs until December 21st.

Check out Violets for Violet to get updates on how Violet McLaren is doing and fundraisers for the girl.