A Kerrville boy fighting brain cancer and his family were facing mounting financial struggles. In just two weeks, strangers helped change everything.
SAN ANTONIO — A Hill Country family received the surprise of a lifetime after a father’s simple request for help to find a birthday gift for his son turned into a new car and a fully paid-for home.
Rogan Glover, a 10-year-old Kerrville boy, has been fighting brain cancer since he was 5 years old. Doctors originally gave him two years to live, but he is still fighting three years later.
Rogan loves singing on his karaoke machine, according to family friend Kristina Richie, a Mountain Home mother of eight and local homebuilder who organized the effort to help the family.
Richie said she had never met the family in person before Saturday, despite following Rogan’s journey online for the past two years after adding his father on Facebook through mutual friends.
“I originally had added him on Facebook because I saw them sharing information about their son’s journey with cancer,” Richie said.
Two weeks ago, Rogan’s father sent Richie a message asking if she knew of any businesses that could help with a birthday present for his son.
Richie said helping was the easiest yes.
At the time, the family was struggling financially while balancing Rogan’s medical care. His mother regularly drove him about two hours away to Austin for treatment while his father worked both a full-time and part-time job to support Rogan and his four siblings.
Richie said the family’s vehicle had been repossessed the year before and their water had been shut off.
“It’s just been one thing after another,” Richie said. “They were struggling with money so bad that they had to empty their change jars to get enough money to take Rogan to treatment.”
Richie said one line in the father’s message especially stuck with her.
“The dad’s message, the last line was, ‘I feel like such a failure,’” Richie said. “And I was like, ‘No.’”
Then she learned about the condition of the family’s home.
“A tree had basically gone through the roof,” Richie said. “I saw a tree branch from inside the home through the roof. I was like, ‘There’s no way that this house can be repaired.'”
She also became concerned about mold and the lack of air conditioning in the home.
So Richie took matters into her own hands.
Using her TikTok platform of more than 130,000 followers, Richie began posting videos about Rogan’s story with the family’s blessing. She first shared Rogan’s Amazon birthday wish list, and 63 gifts were delivered to the family’s Kerrville home. Richie also filled a car with groceries for the family.
Then came the GoFundMe campaign and countless calls to businesses and contacts asking for help.
“I was like, ‘We can make something happen for this little boy’s birthday, like, for sure,’” Richie said. “I’m not letting this boy, who has fought so hard for five years, go without a birthday present.”
The response was overwhelming.
More than 1,600 donors contributed more than $83,000 in less than two weeks. Titan Factory Direct Homes agreed to cover the remaining balance for a new manufactured home and also donated wheelchair ramps, decks, air conditioning and removal of the family’s existing home.
Richie said Titan Factory Direct Homes insisted on giving the family an even larger home than originally planned.
“’Whatever we can do is OK,'” Richie recalled saying to the company’s VP. “And then he says, ‘No, we’re gonna get them a six-bedroom. This is gonna happen. We’re gonna help you.’”
On Friday, Leonard Crafted Homes donated the final $25,000 needed to complete the goal.
Richie also credited TikTok creator “Mama Tot,” Ophelia Nichols, for helping spread the fundraiser online.
“We had Mama Tot, Ophelia, who has 12.2 million followers, make us three different videos,” Richie said. “That meant the world to me because she sent all of her little tater tots over to us to help.”
On Saturday, after Rogan’s birthday party at Mr. Gatti’s in Fredericksburg, the family received what they thought was one final birthday surprise — a new car from Cavender Auto Group waiting outside with a giant red bow.
But another surprise was waiting in the trunk.
“We’re going to tell them there’s one more surprise in the trunk,” Richie said before the reveal, “so that they can find out that they’re getting a brand-new six-bedroom, three-bathroom, 2,300-square-foot home.”
Inside was the news that, in just 14 days, strangers had helped buy the family a fully paid-for home where Rogan and his siblings will each have their own rooms.
Richie said she hopes the experience reminds Rogan and his family they are not alone.
“I want him to know that there’s people out there that care,” she said, “and that even if we’re complete strangers, that good humans still do exist.”
Rogan’s family still needs furnishings for the new home, and Richie said she hopes future donations can help with that.
Richie said Rogan’s cancer later spread to his spine after a brief remission, and the family recently stopped chemotherapy treatments because he had become too weak and wheelchair-bound.
May is Brain Tumor Awareness Month.