Nonprofit uses TikTok to help teen’s dream come true
By Shelby Montgomery
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OKLAHOMA CITY (KOCO) — A TikTok video that’s going viral also is making dreams become a reality for a teenager with cancer.
Gary Perkins, 17, is undergoing treatment at OU Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City, where he will soon get a visit from someone he never expected to meet.
While Perkins gets his treatment, he’s missing his senior year of high school. So, a local nonprofit organization hoping to help him take his senior pictures is now giving him the surprise of a lifetime.
“I was emotional. I was raw, and I grabbed my phone, and I said I need to help,” said Emily Ball, with the nonprofit organization Hospice Lens.
It started with a simple TikTok.
“We are going to take our graduation pictures on our own, and we would love to have a Dallas Cowboys jersey from Mr. (Ezekiel) Elliott. No. 21, give us a call,” Ball said in a TikTok video that blew up overnight and received thousands of likes and nearly 1 million views.
“I woke up this morning from a phone call from Mr. Stacy Elliott, Ezekiel’s father,” Ball said.
Now, Perkins has a signed Elliott jersey on the way for his graduation pictures.
“He told me in the time that I got to know him that Ezekiel Elliott, No. 21, is his all-time hero,” said Ball, who met Perkins through the Toby Keith Foundation. “Bad days, good days, he would pull up anything about Zeke and has a little boy crush.”
But that’s not all. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are heading to Oklahoma soon to say hi to Perkins, who got the news earlier this week. Ball told KOCO 5 he was speechless.
“We are taken back by our community. Everybody had rallied around G, and he needs it,” Ball said.
Ball added that Perkins was ecstatic, saying he was shocked so many strangers helped to make this possible.
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