Classmates Crown Ailing Lemont High School Senior Homecoming Queen

Lemont High School homecoming might have been weeks ago, but the memory still sparkles in the mind of senior Alyssa Wood.

Classmates rallied around senior Wood, who suffers from a rare genetic disease—and crowned her homecoming queen.

“She didn’t take the tiara off for the entire weekend and told me I was going to be seeing it a lot!” said her mother, Marcia Wood.

Wood’s affliction—called ataxia telangiectasia (A-T)—causes progressive loss of muscle control, immune system problems, and a high rate of cancer. Alyssa was born in Vietnam and adopted by the Wood family at the age of three. After they returned home, things with Alyssa seemed amiss. At the age of four, she was diagnosed with A-T.

Most with the disease, like Alyssa, are confined to a wheelchair by the age of 10. Due to the worsening ataxia, children with A-T lose their ability to write, and speech also becomes slowed and slurred. Even reading eventually becomes impossible, as eye movements become difficult to control. It’s a “very complicated disease,” her mother said.

”Alyssa can’t do most of the things that any other senior girl might accomplish,” Wood said. “So for her to do something that only one girl out of the entire class of girls could ever do is more special than you could imagine.”

But the class didn’t stop there. They made Alyssa the center of another tradition: a senior class fundraiser. The proceeds from T-shirts and spirit links sold during homecoming—roughly $2,000—were dedicated to the A-T Children’s Project, in Alyssa’s name.

“We wanted to do something for her,” said Lindsay Wright. “We wanted to make her feel special. ... We just wanted to make the week about her, because she deserves it.”

Wood makes her way around the school in an power wheelchair. She receives assistance from a full-time aide at school and her six siblings—a sister adopted from China, and a brother and two sisters adopted from Vietnam, along with two biological children—help out a lot at home. The disease has worsened over the years, keeping Alyssa from some typical “high schooler” activities.

“In every way but physically, she is a normal 18-year-old girl who wants the normal experiences of an 18-year-old girl,” Wood said. “Watching her friends drive a car, competing on athletic teams, and doing other teenage activities has been tough as she realizes that she will probably never be able to do these things. As her parent, it is heartbreaking to watch.”

But Alyssa’s spirt has never dampened. Her smile has never darkened.

“She’s so positive,” said classmate Aleksandra Mihailovic. “You can’t tell that she has any disability. She’s always smiling, laughing. She’ll attack the volleyball like she plays volleyball. She makes others laugh.”

Even her mother admires Alyssa’s tenacity, particularly through adversity.

“Fortunately for Alyssa she has the type of personality where she doesn’t dwell on things for a long time,” Wood said, “but in recent years, she has had some difficult times.”

Alyssa’s disease affects 1 in every 40,000, 1 in 100,000 births. There is no treatment or cure. Since it is such a rare disease, those who fundraise for A-T are usually family members and people with a connection to an A-T child.

Her classmates’ efforts were kept hidden from Alyssa, until the homecoming assembly.

“When they called her to the center of the gym to present her with the check, her smile was bigger than her face!” Wood said. “The attention from her classmates makes her feel more connected, more like she really is part of the class.

“...They have watched this horrible disease take its toll on her. Most of them see her a lot less than they used to but they didn’t forget her, and we appreciate that more than any of them will ever know. Raising funds to support research is the only thing we can do to fight this disease so the kids’ donation has great value but, for what it meant to Alyssa, their gesture is priceless.”

Alyssa didn’t see either coming—the donation, or the crown. The teachers pick the nominees, then the students vote for their picks of the 14 guys, 14 girls. The entire senior class voted for her.

“I never thought I would win,” Alyssa said.

There was no better choice, Wright said.

“Everyone deep down felt she really deserved it,” Wright said.

Alyssa will graduate from LHS in 2015 and attend a transition program in Orland Park for the next few years. She also plans to take some classes at a local college. As part of her senior schedule, she works at Franciscan Village every other day. She enjoys helping out there, and they are great at finding things that she can do. She dreams of becoming a chef, but often is discouraged because of her condition. With a crown, though, things shifted.

“The kids that made this happen gave Alyssa more than they know,” Wood said. “They gave her hope, and hope inspires dreams, and now she knows that dreams can come true.”