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10-year-old with cancer gets lawnmower as his Make-A-Wish
For as long as he can remember, Coby Clark has had a thing for lawn care.
RIVER FALLS, Wis. — Think back to being 10 years old and what you might have asked for if granted a wish.
As far back as he can remember, Coby Clark dreamed of owning a yard service.
“We’re doing five, four, today, I think,” Coby says as he loads his leaf blower and weed whips into the back of his mother’s SUV. “It’s my favorite thing ever. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
At age 5, for Christmas, Coby asked for a snow blower.
For his 7th birthday, he requested a leaf blower.
At 9, he opened the wrapping paper on a weed whacker.
But a year later, life took a whack at Coby.
“One day I was about to get in the shower, and I collapsed in my dad’s arms. I had a seizure,” Coby explains.
The seizure followed several days of unexplained headaches.
Coby’s parents, James and Anna Clark, became increasingly concerned as their son was rushed to the hospital by ambulance.
“They did a CT scan right away and found a tumor in his brain,” Anna says.
“I think the hardest thing as a parent is you want to take the pain away, but you can’t do anything about it,” James says.
Sitting on the bed, at home in his bedroom, Coby drapes several loaded strands of beads over his head.
“These are called beads of courage,” he explains.
Beads of different colors, given to him during his treatment, represent things like needle pokes, mouth care, and the 76 days Coby spent in the hospital at Mayo Clinic and Children’s Minnesota.
Courage doesn’t begin to cover what Coby has been through the past year-and-a-half, including a stem cell transplant, chemotherapy, radiation, and three brain surgeries.
“Most of it was just praying and knowing that God — he knows what he’s doing,” Coby says. “He’s not doing this, like, to be mean.”
When Coby lost his hair, roughly a hundred of his friends and family members shaved theirs, too.
His hockey teammates wore his number on their helmets.
When Coby was granted a Make-A-Wish, his request surprised none of them.
He didn’t choose Disney World.
A video of the reveal, shot by Coby’s aunt, shows the moment Coby rounded the corner of his home. Shrieking, Coby ran to, and then hugged, his gift.
“A lawnmower,” Coby’s mother laughs. “Yep, he got a lawnmower.”
Not just a lawnmower, but a stand-on Toro commercial mower, with three blades, a 26-horsepower engine, and a 56-inch mowing deck.
“This is the one that I’ve dreamed of my whole life,” Coby says.
Weeks after the unveiling, Coby’s dad says there’s been not a hint of receiver’s remorse.
“He’s praying for the grass to grow,” James laughs. “He wants the grass to grow so he can cut it more.”
Longtime customers like David Woeste didn’t expect a commercial mower in their yards when they first hired a boy who only recently turned 11.
“More awesome is watching him, how he operates equipment, he looks like he was born on this stuff,” David says.
A retired physician, David has seen some things. However, “I’ve never seen a young man or boy, with that kind of determination.”
Take this June, when Coby broke his foot at church camp and was back on his mower — wearing a medical boot — the next day, zipping back and forth across his customer’s lawns.
“Everything he does he gives 110 percent to,” Coby’s mom says as she tries to hold back tears. “Sometimes I wish he’d slow down a little bit, but at the same time, it’s that drive and passion that he has that keeps him going.”
Coby didn’t need Disney for his wish-upon-a-star dream to come true — on the ground.
“This is a roller coaster in itself,” Coby says.
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A ceremony was help honoring the Minnesota Supreme Court’s newest member.
ST PAUL, Minn. — A vast array of judges, lawyers, family and friends gathered at the Minnesota History Center in Saint Paul to honor the newest member of the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Natalie Hudson administered the oath of office to Associate Justice Theodora Gaitas, who was appointed last spring to replace retiring Associate Justice Margaret Chutich.
“A strong judiciary guards against tyranny, against oppression, against injustice. But a strong judiciary also serves the people,” Gaitas told the crowd.
Gaitas, who spent her childhood in Greece, quoted Greek philosopher Aristotle several times in her speech.
“Aristotle wrote law is order and good law is good order,” she said. “Here in Minnesota, we have good order. Good order relies on a strong judiciary.”
Gaitas has spent the past four years as a jurist on the Minnesota Court of Appeals and before that spent two years as a Ramsey County District Court Judge. She took the legal oath previously before joining the Supreme Court in August, so Monday’s event was purely ceremonial.
Gov. Walz appointed Gaitas and Judge Sarah Hennesy last April to fill two vacancies that were expected on the high court in the months ahead. Justice Hennesy joined the Supreme Court on May 13, replacing the retiring Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson.
Walz took a break from the vice-presidential campaign trail Monday afternoon to attend the ceremony and thank Gaitas for accepting the new role.
“One of the questions we asked is what life experiences shaped who you are,” Walz said. “Justice Gaitas’ personal journey, her personal heartaches, as well as her commitment to others shined through in so many ways. Putting others in front of herself, and her work as a public defender doing it with every ounce of her intellect, but with the compassion that needed to be there too, shined through.”
The heartache he referenced was the sudden death in 2023 of Justice Gaitas’s husband R. Christopher Sur. He died while cross-country skiing in Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis with a friend. Their daughter Clea performed with a musical combo at the ceremony and held a copy of the US and Minnesota Constitutions as Gaitas took the oath.
Lt. Gov. Flanagan praised Gaitas for her breadth of experience and connection to those who use the court system.
“Justice Gaitas has excelled at every level of the legal profession and the judiciary. Her extensive experience as an appellate public defender and judge in the district court and court of appeals instilled a deep understanding of how our justice system can and should treat real people.”
Mike Olson served in the Secret Service for over two decades and has some thoughts on what went wrong and what could be done better by the Secret Service.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It’s no secret that the agency tasked with protecting former president Donald Trump are constantly on the lookout for threats, especially following the assassination attempt in July.
The heightened level of concern has former Secret Service agent Mike Olson questioning the actions of Secret Service agents on Sunday. Olson was in the Secret Service for over two decades, and now runs his own security firm, 360 Security Services.
“I have been a part of those golf outings in my career and typically there is much more security on those outer roads outside of the fence line,” Olson said.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He did not fire any shots and never had Trump in his line of sight, the Secret Service’s acting chief said.
Routh appeared briefly in federal court in West Palm Beach, kickstarting a criminal case in the final weeks of a presidential race already touched by violence and upheaval. Though no one was injured, the episode marked the second attempt on Trump’s life in as many months, raising fresh questions about the security afforded to him during a time of amped-up political rhetoric. It prompted Republican allies and even some Democrats to demand to know how a would-be shooter could get so close.
The Secret Service’s acting chief said the golf outing was ‘off the record’ and not released a part of the former president’s public schedule.
“True off the record is going without all the cars and trying to go undercover so to speak,” Olson said.
Routh was arrested Sunday afternoon after authorities spotted a firearm poking out of shrubbery on the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing. He was spotted by a Secret Service agent assigned to Trump’s security detail who opened fire. Routh sped away before being captured by law enforcement in a neighboring county, the authorities said.
Olson said in his experience, there were few levels of protection in off the record outings, usually meaning there wasn’t a massive outside perimeter around the location. This is the part he has questions about, considering the predictability of where the former President likes to golf in West Palm Beach and the day of the week he usually golfs. With heightened level of threat following the first assassination attempt at a rally in July, Olson thinks even ‘off the record’ outings need to be treated as a normal event.
“I am saying across the board, we need to really step things up between now and the election,” Olson said.
The U.S. surgeon general calls parental stress an urgent public health issue that requires the nation’s immediate awareness and action.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — We all know parenting can be stressful but the U.S. surgeon general said it goes beyond that.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has issued an advisory on parental stress, calling attention to an “urgent public health issue.” Murthy said. “advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that require the nation’s immediate awareness and action.”
Dr. Murthy said there are many factors affecting parents today. Beyond the traditional challenges, he mentions “there are new stressors that previous generations didn’t have to consider. These include the complexity of managing social media, parents’ concerns about the youth mental health crisis, and an epidemic of loneliness that disproportionately affects young people and parents, just to name a few.”
Meghan Tompkins of Golden Valley is a mom to three — ages 5, 3 and 11 months.
“My husband and I were just talking about it the other day, actually… deciding if we want to have another kid or not. We’re almost at this point, even with a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old and just their kind of basic activities… there’s kind of an expectation to put your kids in all these things and try everything and you want them to. But then we also feel like we’re kind of capped out almost,” Tompkins said.
According to the surgeon general’s advisory, 41% of parents say most days they are so stressed they cannot function.
“I try to talk to my mom about it and tell her that it’s different, that it is more stressful and the stresses are different, and she doesn’t really understand it,” said Emma Skala of Minneapolis.
Skala’s kids are ages 7 and 4. Skala homeschools her boys, citing school shootings as one of the main reasons behind her decision.
According to the report, school shootings or the possibility of one are a significant source of stress for nearly 75% of parents.
“I can’t fathom putting a small child through an active shooter drill. I just, it breaks my heart every time I hear about it. I cry every time I hear about any kind of school shooting that happens. That’s I think one of the main things is the safety of our children,” Skala.
The advisory also mentions nearly 70% of parents say parenting is now more difficult than it was 20 years ago, with children’s use of technology and social media as the top two cited reasons.
“I let my 3.5-year-old scroll YouTube and I’m nervous about that. Should I really be letting him do that? How much control do I have on that? And you know that we need to limit screen time, and yet that’s an easy go-to when I’m trying to make dinner… I’m trying to do my part-time job from home,” said Kristi Thao, who also has a 3-month-old baby.
Thao also mentioned how social media and access to so much advice can put more pressure on parents.
“Then we try all these different things but it’s like, then there’s so many options. I think having too many options can also make things more stressful. There’s too many choices,” Thao said.
The advisory acknowledges an “intensifying culture of comparison—often propagated by influencers and online trends—with unrealistic expectations around the milestones, parenting strategies, achievements and status symbols that kids and parents must pursue. Chasing these unreasonable expectations has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind.”
Lena K. Gardner became a mom three months before the pandemic.
“In my personal journey, I am a single mom by choice,” Gardner said. “And I thought I could do that because I have a big support network but COVID took that all away.”
The advisory states, “This high level of stress among parents preceded the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pandemic notably contributed to additional stressors on parents and caregivers.”
During the pandemic, Gardner isolated with her daughter. At the same time, her daughter would only sleep for 1.5 hours at a time before waking up.
“I became so sleep-deprived, I started having hallucinations. I called my therapist and I was like, ‘That’s it. Motherhood has broken me.’ And she said, ‘No it hasn’t. This is the first sign of extreme sleep deprivation.’ And she’s like, ‘You need help,'” Gardner recalled.
Once her daughter was in daycare, Gardner said she had to navigate daycare closures or exclusions during the pandemic.
“It still happens. Your kid gets COVID. They’re excluded for how many days and you’re left to bear the brunt of it,” said Gardner, whose parents have both passed away.
The report said social isolation and lack of social support can lead to heightened stress. On top of that, parents, on average, are working more than before.
“Most people are required to be at their jobs from something like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. But schooling is from like 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it just doesn’t make logistical sense,” Gardner said.
She went on to say, “There are a lot of solutions and it baffles me why we’re not doing them more.”
Dr. Murthy mentioned the need for a cultural shift that recognizes the importance of raising children.
At the same time, he also pointed to the need for policy changes. Among his recommendations include promoting and expanding funding for programs such as Head Start and the Healthy Start program, establishing a national paid family and medical leave program, and ensuring parents and caregivers have access to affordable and high-quality mental health care.
The full advisory can be found, here.
