Olympian Auctions Off Silver Medal To Pay For Boy's Heart Surgery
If you're desperate for some good news out of society, the story of Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk, who won her very first medal, a silver, at the Tokyo Games has a story that will warm your heart and remind you that there are many, many good people in society. 25-year-old Andrejczyk got home from Tokyo and decided she wanted to do something good with the silver medal and decided it would be put up for auction and the money would go towards helping someone in society.
Maria, who beat bone cancer in 2018, just needed suggestions.
That's when she landed on the story of an 8-month-old boy named Miloszek, who desperately needed a heart surgery that had to be done at Stanford University, but the costs would be enormous. We're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $385,000.
Andrejczyk, determined to help, decided the silver medal money would be used on a little boy she'd never met. "It didn't take me long to decide, it was the first fundraiser I entered and I knew it was the right one. Miloszek has a serious heart defect and is in need of surgery," she said about her decision.
The medal went up for auction and that's when things got really interesting.
Polish convenience store Zabka heard about the auction money going to a good cause and started bidding, and bidding, and bidding. The silver medal ended up selling for around $178,000 and further contributions have taken the final number to just under $200,000 raised via the silver medal auction.
"The winner, and at the same time, the company I will be eternally grateful to is the company Zabka," Andrejczyk wrote on Facebook. "It is with the greatest pleasure to give you Zabka this medal, which for me is a symbol of struggle, faith and pursuit of dreams despite many odds."
"I hope that for you it will be a symbol of the life we fought for together," she added.
Baby Miloszek
The convenience store told Maria to keep the medal.
"The true value of a medal always remains in the heart. A medal is only an object, but it can be of great value to others," Maria told The Times (UK). "This silver can save lives, instead of collecting dust in a closet."