JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – This month’s winner Positively Jax has turned tragedy and heartache into something beautiful.
Team A.Maise consists of a family whose 3-month-old daughter died of an extremely rare lung condition on November 3, 2019.
Ashlyn Maise Leide was hospitalized for a month in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Wolfson Children’s Hospital. During their stay, the family received much needed care packages.
Eric and Heather Leide were broken, but they had this support to keep them together.
“We witnessed a lot of kindness and generosity when we were there. I mean, when you’re in that room, you feel like you’re alone. But the community was reaching out, people at the hospital were giving us things and donating just trying to make our day special,” Leide said.
These care packages helped give them a sense of comfort and normalcy despite the stress of being a sick girl. Ashlyn passed away a month after that hospital stay, and now the family is repaying her with the same kind of support she received.
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“It’s things you don’t really think about, like we have a snack bar and coffee cart, because sometimes like with our daughter, her health fluctuated and we couldn’t leave her at the bedside. So just to be able to get out of the room, have a cup of coffee, or if you’re hungry, a protein bar or snack,” Leide said.
The A.Maise team makes monthly deliveries to UF Health and Wolfson Children’s Hospital to provide snacks, coffee, comfort carts and their latest idea — a clothing pantry.
“We had the luxury of being able to tag team and go home and get clothes, but we’ve met families who have been in a car accident in ’95 and had nothing. They had no clothes other than what was on their backs,” Leide said.
So far, they have made more than 89,000 donations in just two short years.
“We know we’re reaching out to people. We just didn’t know how big the impact was,” Leide said.
It’s not only Positively Jax, but it’s also nothing short of amazing.
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For more information or to make a donation to Team A.Maise, go to their website: https://www.teamamaise.org/about.
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