Utah County sale raises $8,500 for ill 5-year-old

EAGLE MOUNTAIN — When Mackenzie Casey and Jen Morrison put on a Saturday morning garage and bake sale they mean serious business — the kind of seriousness that brings in $2,125 an hour. Hundreds of families across Utah Valley filed through a crowded Eagle Mountain school gymnasium and dropped $8,500 on donated furniture, cloths and toys in support of a local child with a rare illness.

Five-year-old Sadie Huish of Eagle Mountain was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor two months ago that was so advanced, she was immediately qualified as a Make-A-Wish Foundation wish recipient, which exclusively serves children with "life-threatening" medical conditions. She wished for a trip to Disney World, to drive her own kid-sized toy car and to meet Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A day before the big sale, volunteers spent hours preparing heaps of neighborhood donations from vintage big screen TVs to waist-high piles of clothes and stacks of bikes and strollers. "It was like a 12-hour day," one volunteer said about the long Friday while sporting a shirt that read, "For Sadie's Sake."

Not all the items were worn-out, second-hand things like the faux leather couch that somebody had mended with duct-taped and abandoned in the school's entrance. Some were new. Sadie's uncle, Ian Casey, 32, manned a busy table brimming with new items that he brokered to sell for his "beautiful niece." Three hours into the four-hour sale his table alone had racked up around $250, he said.

Kim Conley, owner of the Kaleidoscope Boutique in Provo, also arrived with new merchandise. She cleared a few of her store's clothes racks and topped tables with piles of blouses and stilettos under a homemade sign that suggested negotiation: "Make a great offer for Sadie."

"I'm basically taking what people will offer me," she said. And when asked if she had felt if buyers were taking advantage of the deals — $120 shoes being bought at $15 — she said no but softened her denial by admitting to wishing for more. "It's never enough, though," she said frankly. "Is it? Not for this cause. But people are being generous with what they have."

Three tables away, just past the father and son lugging a used air hockey table through a swarming isle, Alisa Ottesen's children earnestly sorted through oodles of things on which to spend their hard-earned allowance.

"I told them they could spend all of it here, if they wanted," said Ottesen, who made it clear her suggestions to squander in one place atypical. "But this cause it worth it."