MEMPHIS, TN (abc24.com) - A cancer survivor is giving kids being treated for cancer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital hope. Researcher Gabby Salinas is a cancer survivor herself but now she works to help others.
"St. Jude means the world to me," Salinas told abc24.com, "It's special to me personally and professionally."
As a child, doctors in New York diagnosed her with Ewing's Sarcoma and told her family they needed to pay $250,000 for treatment. They didn't have the money, but lucky for her a reporter for the New York Daily News overheard her aunt talking about the family's predicament and wrote a story about it.
"Marlo Thomas, the daughter of Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude, read the story and contacted us and said I have a place that treats Ewing's Sarcoma and you don't have to pay anything," Salinas said.
The next day they were on a plane to Memphis and she's been here ever since. "If I didn't have treatment here I might not have made it."
