makeawishsfla's video: Jadyn s wish to meet Zoo Miami s Ron Magill - Make-A-Wish Southern Florida

A passionate animal lover, 8-year-old Jadyn has dreamt of meeting Ron Magill, the Zoo Miami Ambassador. During weeks of intense radiation treatments in her battle with a cancerous brain tumor, Jadyn’s favorite mental escape has been through virtual zoo visits via Magill’s online “Zoocademy” clips. She wanted to learn how to care for animals from someone who loves them just as much as she does. As VIP as it gets, Jadyn not only arrived to Zoo Miami in a limousine. It was also the first time in the Zoo’s 40-year history that the Zoo has opened for a single person! Ron Magill met his biggest fan with a very special gift – stuffed tiger (because of COVID, she can’t interact with a real big cat) and official adoption certificate of one of the tigers in the zoo. Upon entering the exhibits, Jadyn embarked on a VIP golf cart tour with the most fitting entrance - - the monkeys swung from tree to tree, making a commotion only fit for the queen of the jungle. Her first animal encounter was feeding carrots to the giraffes, and marveling at the length of the giraffe’s eyelashes and tongues. After hopping back on the golf cart, there were equally memorable interactions with the elephants and the chimpanzees. The most special of special moments was something that Ron Magill said he had never been able to do – bottle feed milk to a baby camel! And the perfect slithery end to her wild adventure was a too-close-for-most encounter with a giant snake that wrapped itself around Jadyn for a special kind of embrace. Ron Magill said, “There is no greater investment that we can make than that in the life of a child which is why one of my favorite sayings is, ‘In the end, it will not matter how big your house was, how fancy your car was, or how much money you had in the bank. What will matter is that you made a difference in the life of a child.’ I am, and will always be, profoundly grateful to Make-A-Wish for allowing me to do that.” Wish Granters: Karen Mullins & Jennifer Prior Referred by Nicole Boik, her child life specialist Wish adopted by Atlantic Pacific Companies