A young Prince George family has received an early Christmas gift, courtesy of a major Canadian corporation with a penchant for reaching out to the community.
When Chelsea Schmelzel, 28, came across a posting on Telus's Facebook page asking "If you could give anything to anyone, what would you give?" she had a ready answer.
Kale, her three-year-old son, has cerebral palsy and needs a wheelchair to get around. He and her husband, Dallas, 29, got him a power chair that he can operate on his own to move around.
But one item was still missing.
Because the power chair weighed some 250 pounds, it remained at his daycare, and he was stuck with a manual chair that his parents had to push around at home. So the first thing that came to Chelsea's mind was a wheelchair lift for the family van.
"They called me, I think within a few days, to say they wanted to give me a box of stuffed animals and Telus stuff," Chelsea said in an interview Friday.
She was just happy with that but then the next day Telus called again.
"They said 'actually, we want to do more for you, we want to actually get you the lift,'" Chelsea said.
Although she knew beforehand that the lift was going to be installed, it did not take away from the emotions that ran through her when it was captured on film when she, Kale and Dallas first set eyes on the finished product.
On the video that was subsequently posted at www.telusgiving.com and www.facebook.com/telus, the tears of joy were definitely welling. It was one thing to hear about it, but to actually see it there brought it all home.
"I don't think they [Telus] really understand the impact of what they just did," Chelsea said.
The gift saved the couple - one an employee in the Fortis call centre and the other a carpenter who works a lot out of town - thousands of dollars but just as important gave young Kale a new level of freedom.
As the video progresses it becomes obvious that being able to use the power chair all day has made Kale one happy little camper. In one scene, he used it to make his way through Pine Centre mall for a visit with Santa.
Telus social media director Dan Sorotschynski said it wasn't a contest but rather an offshoot of the regular social media the company engages in.
"At Thanksgiving, we asked 'what are you thankful for?,' and this holiday season we thought of 'if you could give a gift to anyone, what would you give?,'" Sorotschynski said. "We were so inspired by some of the posts that actually came back that we decided to act on some of them."
One of six in a series, the video has become something of a sensation. As of Friday afternoon, it's generated more than 1,200 likes and nearly 250 comments on Telus's Facebook page and nearly 14,000 views on YouTube in the day since it was posted.
"These are the types of things I love to do," said Sorotschynski, who coordinated the initiative. "When you can help somebody out and just make their Christmas that much better."
