Kasey and her mother Alyssa Zachmann watch the parade in front of their home. Photo / Allison Robbert, the Washington Post
Kelly Zocks doesn’t usually go all out for Christmas. She might hang some twinkly lights, maybe put up a wreath on the red door of her home.
But on the last Saturday in June, following a week of dangerously hot temperatures in the Washington DC region, Zocks dotted her walkway with glowing luminaria, set up a red inflatable shopfront announcing, “cookies for Santa”, propped open lawn chairs and put on a Mrs Claus costume and wig.
She then loaded up a cooler with dozens of chocolate ice pops. Frozen hot cocoa, if you will.
Hers was one of hundreds of households that signed up to celebrate Christmas in June for a little girl with cancer who might not make it to December.
For kilometres, in the thick heat and humidity, neighbours dressed in holiday apparel gathered to watch the girl and her family wind through streets alight and glowing, like a scene out of a Christmas card.
At a time when crises, global and local, feel constant and far beyond any one person’s control, several community members said they felt grateful to be able to do something tangible to help one family find a moment of happiness in the face of certain tragedy.
It started with an email to neighbours from Alyssa Zachmann, whose 9-year-old daughter Kasey was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer four years ago.
“Kasey loves Christmas,” Zachmann wrote last weekend, “and we want to give her a chance to experience some Christmas joy, so we are hoping some houses in the neighbourhood would be willing to put up Christmas lights next Saturday.”
Zachmann knew this week was going to be a scorcher. She didn’t expect anyone to go too far out of their way.
Maybe some lights here and there, a few decorations on a front lawn or two.
The houses nearby, in the Brookdale and Westbrook neighbourhoods, would be more than enough to make Kasey feel like Christmas had come early, she thought.
She made a spreadsheet to keep track; so the family could make sure to drive by each household that volunteered. But as the days passed, the number of names multiplied.
A dozen people signed up. Then 100. By Saturday afternoon, the list had exceeded 270 homes from 11 neighbourhoods up and down the DC-Maryland border.
In 2021, when Kasey was just 5, she was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer. Kasey underwent months of chemotherapy as she attended primary school.
At first, Alyssa Zachmann said, the family wasn’t as public about Kasey’s diagnosis.
They held on to a quiet hope that she could beat back the disease and become one of the six in 10 children who, according to the US National Institutes of Health, go on to survive a medulloblastoma diagnosis.
For a few months in 2022, the cancer appeared to be in remission. But then, Alyssa Zachmann said, it returned.
“When you feel helpless in the face of something like this, people channel that in different ways.
“We channelled it into advocacy and raising money for paediatric brain cancer research, which means we had to start talking about it,” she said, noting their work with the non-profit Lilabean Foundation for Paediatric Brain Cancer Research.
“I think deep down we thought, ‘What if we can raise enough money to find a cure for Kasey before it’s too late?’”
Over the last four years, Kasey has endured 10 surgeries, dozens of rounds of radiation and an aggressive regimen of medication, including two clinical trials. In that time, Zachmann said, the community has got to know Kasey and her story.
When the Zachmanns announced they would be participating in Children’s National’s annual Race for Every Child, dozens of neighbours signed up to donate money or run in the 5k.
In the last three years, Team KVZ has been one of Children’s National’s top fundraisers for the event. In 2022, Kasey’s team had 64 members and raised more than US$55,000.
The next year, Team KVZ had grown to 90 people and brought in more than US$60,000 in donations. Last year, the biggest turnout yet, had 139 team members who helped raise nearly US$70,000 in donations.
“This family is so fantastic – just the grace they’ve shown in sharing their story and being so open about everything they’ve gone through over the course of this,” said Dana Rice, a neighbour who lives in Brookdale community and worked as the Zachmann family’s real estate agent.
“It makes the rest of us in the community feel like this family belongs to all of us. That this is our story, too.”
This month, the Zachmanns learned that the cancer in Kasey’s brain had spread to her lymph nodes – a rare progression. Doctors told them that Kasey didn’t have much time.
Alyssa and Joe Zachmann began to think about what they could do for their daughter to make whatever time she had left as joyful as possible.
One idea rose to the top: what if we did Christmas, the family posited. In June.
Kasey’s love of Christmas has never been contained to the holiday season.
She watches Christmas movies devotedly – Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone films are some of her favourites – and sings along to Christmas carols all year round. Her most-loved album, Gwen Stefani’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas, is on a near-constant rotation in the family’s home.
These days, Kasey gets tired quickly. When she’s awake, her small body is wracked with pain. Medications help manage it, but make her lethargic and sleepy.
To ensure Kasey had “a few good hours” on Saturday, the Zachmanns planned to manage her medications carefully – and did what they could to make sure Kasey’s best window lined up with a visit from Santa.
“I grew up Jewish; I didn’t even celebrate Christmas until I met my husband,” Alyssa Zachmann said days before Saturday’s event as the list of participants continued to grow.
“But Christmas magic is real, and I’m hoping it’s present for my family and the whole neighbourhood this weekend.”
On Saturday, Santa didn’t arrive in a sleigh. The big man in red got driven to Kasey’s house in an antique engine from the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department.
Firefighters from several departments across the state – from Bethesda Fire to Ocean City Volunteer Fire Company – rode through the neighbourhood like they do in December for the annual Christmas parade. But first, they delivered cards and gifts directly to Kasey.
“The volunteer fire service doesn’t do anything small,” said Lieutenant Megan Quinn of the Glen Echo Fire Department. “They don’t do anything halfway.”
Neither does the Zachmanns’ neighbourhood.
Houses were draped with banners that read “Merry Christmas, Kasey!” One house on Jamestown Rd spelled out Kasey’s initials, KVZ, in lights. Neighbours and local businesses propped up decorations and hung homemade ornaments in the Zachmanns’ front yard.
Just after 8pm, Santa arrived with a “ho-ho-ho” and a helper at his side. It wasn’t an elf, but instead the mascot Dr Bear from Children’s National Hospital, where Kasey goes for treatment.
Kasey beamed, and hugged the two before taking their hands and leading them to sit on the porch.
Children in elf ears, Christmas pyjamas and Santa hats clamoured around the trio as Dr Bear offered up tickles and high-fives.
Kasey read her cards aloud and then called her little sister, Zara, over to share in one of the gifts: stuffed animals of the sibling duo Bluey and Bingo, from the popular show.
Joe Zachmann, Kasey’s dad, wiped away tears.
Soon, the parade set off with the Zachmann family car following close behind. As evening fell, the Christmas celebration began to feel more like a summer block party.
Alison Goradia, a former registered nurse at Children’s National who also lives in the neighbourhood, was one of the first people to call the Glen Echo Fire Department and ask that they roll out the usual Christmas pageantry. She also donned the Dr Bear costume Saturday night.
“This is such great modelling for our kids. It’s how to show up, how to actually be present and put everything else aside and say, ‘This moment matters more than anything else going on,’” she said.
“This moment matters so much, not just to this sweet little girl who’s fighting for her life literally, but for her family, who will have this memory forever.”
As the Zachmanns drove past people stretched out on front porches and lawns, several neighbours came up to the back seat to give Kasey gifts and words of encouragement. At the house with the big inflatable display for Mrs Claus’s cafe, Zocks appeared.
Under her grey coiffed wig, Zocks wore a white tank top and 1920s-style red-and-white striped bathing suit bottom, glasses with a pearl chain, red lipstick and a watermelon pool floaty around her waist. She offered Zara, Kasey’s sister, a fruit popsicle out of a metallic ice cream cart.
It went like this, on and on, for kilometres.
The Zachmann family, determined to see every home that put in the effort to deliver Christmas for Kasey, drove around for two hours.
Neighbours who spotted them shouted “Merry Christmas” and cheered. Some stayed outside to greet the family through squalls of rain.
Kasey was quiet in the back seat. Her small face looked out, taking in the lights.
Every so often, as the family passed another house, another neighbour, another display with Kasey’s name draped across front doors and parked cars, Kasey let out a single breathless word: “Wow”.
It marked the first such deal with a country that the US has a trade deficit with.