Lockport Teen In Cancer Fight Treated To Christmas Lights Surprise

LOCKPORT, IL — A Lockport teen boy fighting cancer was a little baffled to see all the lights and sirens as fire trucks pulled up to his house Wednesday evening. It took a minute for it to sink in, that the firefighter volunteers hopping out of the engines were actually there for him.

The crews from dozens of departments across the suburbs came as part of the Lights and Ladders Brigade with Project Fire Buddies helping out, to decorate the home of Vinnie Gincauskas, a nearly 16-year-old boy battling a rare cancer. The volunteers put on some holiday music, took to their assigned tasks, and got started.

The Lockport Township High School student in March was diagnosed with rare cancer DSRCT, or desmoplastic small round cell tumors. The tumors are a soft tissue sarcoma, which is a type of cancer that forms in the connective tissue of the body. He recently underwent surgery to have nearly 100 tumors removed from his abdominal cavity, his mother Mary Ellen Gincauskas told Patch. A previous surgery removed more tumors and a lymph node from his chest.

"It's very rare, and very, very aggressive, so we've been fighting it very aggressively," Gincauskas said.

Vinnie seemed stunned that so many would come out to do this for him.

"It's pretty exciting, I didn't know this was going to happen!" he said.

Vinny has been taken under the wing of nonprofit Project Fire Buddies, a volunteer-led effort by local fire departments to show support for children battling critical illness. Started in Oak Forest in 2016, the group's momentum continues to grow, expanding now to 30 different departments including south suburban Oak Lawn, Palos, Orland Park, Tinley Park, Midlothian, Homewood, Lockport, Lemont, New Lenox, Evergreen Park, Frankfort and Country Club Hills.

Project Fire Buddies this year fell in step with the Brigade, an effort under the umbrella of the Finley Forever Foundation. The Brigade works as a combined unit of several organizations—The Tom Hopkins Foundation, Christmas without Cancer and Finley Forever—which come together to raise money and bring cheer to families battling cancer during the holiday season by decorating the families' homes. The effort is entirely funded by donations collected throughout the year. In total, organizers purchased nearly $15,000 in decorations this year—all of which the recipient families will be able to keep.

Finley Forever Founder Dan Bracken started the foundation, and later the brigade, following the September 2020 death of his 2-year-old daughter Finley, less than a year after she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Firefighters from across three states volunteer their time to decorate the homes of multiple recipients.

"When we were going through our battle with cancer, my dad and brother came over and forcefully made us decorate the house," Finley Forever Founder Dan Bracken previously told Patch. "It was in November, it's the last thing a family's worried about, is decorating the house, when you're dealing with this.

"... Money's great, emotional support's great, food trains are great—everything's great—but what can we do that takes a burden off the family? You never know when your last Christmas will be."

It's been a whirlwind since Vinnie's diagnosis, Gincauskas alluded. What started with him waking up nauseated in the mornings, led to an emergency room trip, an ultrasound on his abdomen and the discovery of "not just one mass, but too many to count and measure."

Vinnie started chemotherapy shortly after, with weeks spent at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.

"It was very intense," Gincauskas said. "He was very sick, his counts would get low. We did that to shrink the tumors to make it an easier job for the surgeon to go in."

He also underwent radiation, said his father, Nick. Vinnie's largest tumor measured 18 centimeters.

"We're doing what we can, we're fighting it as aggressively as we can, but the chances of it coming back are too great," Mary Ellen Gincauskas said. "But we'll fight it again if it comes back. A lot of patients that have had this have had multiple surgeries, because it has come back. It's just what we're up against, and we're going to keep fighting."

Vinnie's big personality has helped him throughout his fight, Gincauskas added.

"He is a character," she said, laughing. "He just has this sense of humor, I think that's how he gets through it, for sure."

When able, Vinnie enjoys participating in drama and choir. He'd been set to start playing on a volleyball team prior to his diagnosis, Gincauskas said. He was most worried about being well enough to participate in the Lockport Park District's haunted hayride, she added.

"He would tell doctors he had to be okay, to go to the hayride," she said.

The Gincauskas' house was the second stop in a five-house route for the Brigade on Wednesday. The group this year was able to decorate 13 homes, including six total in the suburbs. Fire departments represented included Oak Lawn, Chicago, Posen, Flossmor, Country Club Hills, Lockport, Orland Park, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Tinley Park, Aurora, Chicago Heights, Cicero, Manhattan, New Lenox, Frankfort and McHenry Township.

Anne Hopkins, representing the Tom Hopkins Foundation, told Patch earlier in the evening that they've been thrilled to see the support shown to the Brigade, and were ecstatic to expand beyond its original premise of homes on the South Side of Chicago.

"We realized it was a great turnout, a lot of support from the community, and we heard a lot of great feedback," Hopkins said. "We said, 'let's make it bigger, let's expand.' All these firemen, everyone wants to come and volunteer and do this. It kind of grew overnight, and we're so happy to be a part of it.

"It's something so simple, seeing all these lights and all these people decorating ... so awesome."

Lockport Fire Chief John O'Connor was there watching as the night unfolded.

"This is something outside the box," he said. "You want to do something for a member of your community and a family that's in need. "This is the last thing on their plate, something you can do to brighten their day, brighten the holidays."

Vinnie was touched at the show of support for his family.

"Thank you so much, it means a lot for you to do this for me and my family," he said he'd tell the volunteers.

Besides the decorations, Vinnie is most excited to enjoy holiday foods, and he's hoping he gets the top item on his Christmas wishlist: a cello.

Gincauskas marveled as firefighters took to the steep angles of the family's garage roof, a task she and her husband tend to skip due to difficulty. Luckily, the firefighters will come back and take down them down, she was assured—her husband is afraid of heights.