Wish doctors

A major truck overhaul is a dream come true for a boy with leukemia

All Sean Tedrick had asked of Make-A-Wish Foundation was to remove a couple dents and install a new set of tires on his 1988 Ford Ranger.

But when he saw his truck for the first time in a month on Thursday, the battered old rig had a gleaming jet-black paint job, a custom aluminum grill, a California tailgate with an inverted handle, a four-inch lift kit, new tires and rims, new red velour upholstery and carpet, new dashboard, new windshield, Line-X bed liner, clear-glass Euro headlights, tail lights and marker lights, and a new shifter in place of the old aluminum baseball bat he'd been using to get it into gear.

Under all that flash, there's a rebuilt transmission, new brakes, a new exhaust system and, although liability issues prevented an engine rebuild, all fresh fluids and freshly tightened connections.

And you ought to hear the new custom sound system.

"I think that's pretty awesome," said the 17-year-old Columbia Falls High School junior who is in the process of winning his three-year battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. "It's mind-blowing."

"I was in complete awe. I was really shocked," Tedrick said Thursday afternoon. "I didn't expect them to go that far into it, but I am very happy that they did. I'm very happy with the truck. It's a gem."

"We tricked it out," Hardcore Customs owner Dennis Boultinghouse said. "It doesn't look like a Ford Ranger no more."

It was Hardcore Customs (www.hccustoms.com) that Leslie Woodfill turned to when she wanted to bring some sparkle into Tedrick's life.

Woodfill is a wish manager for Make-A-Wish Foundation in Spokane, where she works to brighten the lives of kids between ages 2 1/2 and 18 who have a life-threatening illness or condition. She started working with Tedrick not long after his shocking Oct. 25, 2004, cancer diagnosis.

Hardcore Customs opened on U.S. 2 south of Columbia Falls just nine months ago. The Boultinghouse family had moved from California where they operated Hardcore Racing and, for more than two decades, their complete auto restoration and customization business.

But being new to the Flathead community didn't dampen the retired peace officer's desire to pitch in.

"He was excited about helping on this," Woodfill said. "He had the truck pulled apart into pieces within an hour of when I gave him the go-ahead … They're awesome. Dennis deeply discounted whatever they couldn't get donated."

"We were glad to be a part of this," Boultinghouse said of his wife, Debbie, sons Doug and Josh, and employees Tim Stoddard, Shane VanNess and Joe Muldoon. "The community's been good to us and we wanted to give back."

It signaled something finally going right in a life that started going very wrong three years ago.

"When I first got sick, I'd get hot and then I'd get cold. I'd be really sick. I wouldn't eat and I'd throw up. Then I got these little black dots on my leg," Tedrick said.

"I was really bad the day I went in. I had a high temperature and I was throwing up. The doctor told me later that if I'd waited a few more days I would have been dead."

His stepfather, Brian Leonhardt, remembers that day clearly.

Tedrick couldn't even walk, so Leonhardt carried his stepson to the car for the trip to Glacier Medical Associates. Doctors then sent the dehydrated boy to North Valley Hospital, where they discovered extremely low blood counts and examined the three unexplained spots on his leg.

Tedrick received three units of blood and one unit of platelets before he and his mom left for their midnight run to Spokane's Sacred Heart Medical Center. There, surgeons cut all the way to the bone to remove the three spots of gangrene.

"I thought it was just a bug bite," Leonhardt said. "But they turned to silver-dollar size overnight. Because of the low blood count, there was no infection-fighting going on at all."

The subsequent diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia bound Tedrick to the Spokane hospital for the next 37 days. When he finally did return home to Columbia Falls, he started making trips every couple weeks back to Spokane for chemotherapy treatments.

That consumed most of his eighth-grade year. He was in class for half-days during his freshman year, then started into full days with his sophomore year.

This year, he's got an eight-period class day that starts off with 45 minutes of weight-lifting during "zero period" to help rebuild his strength.

His cancer is in remission, and his final chemotherapy treatment is slated for Jan. 28. After that, it's check-ups every six to eight weeks.

All things being equal, he'll be graduating on schedule with his class of 2009.

Today, he said he feels "really good." The portacath in his chest keeps him out of football, but that's about it.

"I feel healthy. I feel like a normal 17-year-old teenager," Tedrick said. "I have a healthy appetite."

When Woodfill received the referral for Tedrick's case and asked the 14-year-old what he would want if he could wish for anything in the world, Tedrick suggested a trip to Alaska. But before details could be worked out, his mom's pregnancy with Tedrick's little brother prevented her from traveling along.

If Mom couldn't go, Tedrick said, he wasn't going.

So he asked for a spa day for his mother.

"She was going through a lot right then," Tedrick said.

And this from a 14-year-old boy.

"What a sweet kid," Woodfill said in amazement last week.

But she gently pressed the issue to see if there wasn't something the foundation could do specifically for Tedrick. He was the one facing an uncertain future of chemotherapy and cancer.

So Tedrick's mother, Delwinna Leonhardt, suggested he ask for something for his truck. The 1988 Ranger had been passed from an uncle to Tedrick's grandmother to another uncle and back to Grandma, who finally gave it to the young teen last spring. After three years of sitting unused, it was in pretty rough shape. Tedrick paid a mechanic $850 to rebuild the transmission and managed to drive it all summer, even though the transmission still wasn't up to par.

His mom's suggestion seemed like a good idea, but he figured it wouldn't need much. The truck was running, after all.

Woodfill figured he needed a bit more.

She set to work, checking with Hardcore Customs on what they might be able to do. She gave each new go-ahead as Boultinghouse lined up more and more surprises for Tedrick.

In the end Columbia Falls Les Schwab donated tires and rims, Columbia Falls NAPA donated all suspension parts, Lanktree Glass in Kalispell donated the windshield, Line-X of Kallispell donated the bed liner, Loose Ends Upholstery of Kalispell donated labor, Parts Plus in Kalispell donated paint, Glacier Jet Technologies of Kalispell donated time and material for lights, and Exhaust Worx of Kalipell donated a piece of the exhaust pipe.

"Every single person I asked for help said, 'Yes. What do you need and when do you need it?" Boultinghouse said.

Hardcore Customs put it all together and did all the remaining work in just 30 days.

Boultinghouse even ran interference so Tedrick wouldn't get suspicious.

"The reason he thinks his truck is in here is to repair the driver's door and the fender, and he knew Make-A-Wish was putting a lift kit on for him," Boultinghouse said before Thursday's presentation. But he knew the real work would take much longer than Tedrick expected.

"I told him we were more than happy to do the job for him, but I had other clients in front of him and they were paying clients," Boultinghouse recounted. "I said you have to understand I've got to run my business. He was good about that. Sean came in a couple times early on and saw all the pieces off the truck, but they were the ones he knew were going to be worked on."

Going on her ninth year as a Make-A-Wish staffer, Woodfill is particularly pleased with the outcome.

"There's really great people in the Kalispell area," she said.

She's hoping Tedrick's experience helps spark the interest of more volunteers for the foundation - volunteers who would meet the youngsters, find out their wishes, keep them excited about the wish until it happens and then throw a party for them. She's planning to do a volunteer training here in April.

And she wants to get across one more thing.

"There is something cool for kids facing this kind of thing," she said, acknowledging that there's a lot of tough stuff for them to surmount. "And it can happen more. Give us a call."

Make-A-Wish Foundation can be reached at 800-207-8476 or www.wish.org

As for Tedrick, he's looking forward to his 18th birthday on May 25.

Eventually, he wants to tackle the engine rebuild that the Ranger desperately needs. He's no mechanic himself, he admitted, but likes to work on motors and likes to learn. His uncles and stepfather are car-smart, he said, and might partner with him on the work.

But there's something that will have to come first, he said.

"My mom's '87 Nissan pickup needs a new motor. We let somebody borrow it and they let the oil run out and it seized up," Tedrick said, thinking first of someone else yet again.

"So I'll do Mom's motor before I do mine."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com