Help Maya Walk Again
Eight-year-old Maya needs spinal surgery and a year of rehab after a car accident took her ability to walk.
Elena Vasquez is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Maya Vasquez
Created April 13, 2026Identity verified
On a rainy Tuesday in March, our daughter Maya was riding home from school when a delivery truck ran a red light. She survived — the doctors call it a miracle — but the accident fractured two vertebrae and left her unable to walk without assistance.
Maya is eight. She wants to be a marine biologist. She has a stuffed orca named Captain and a list of every aquarium in Colorado, ranked. What she doesn't have is a clear path back to the life she had, because the surgery that could restore most of her mobility — a posterior spinal fusion with a specialist in Houston — is only partially covered by our insurance.
The surgery is scheduled for August. After it comes a year of intensive physical therapy, three sessions a week, plus travel and equipment: a pediatric standing frame, home ramp, and adaptations to our car. We've sold what we can and both of us have taken extra shifts, but the honest math is that we're $85,000 short across surgery costs, deductibles, travel, and rehab.
We never imagined asking strangers for help. But Maya asked us last month, "Do you think people would help me if they knew?" This page is us finding out. Every dollar goes to her medical care, tracked and receipted. Whatever happens, thank you for reading this far — it means someone out there knows her name.
