Ft. Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel is running an article about a little girl with terminal cancer who just wanted to see a big cruise ship. So last year her parents took her to Port Everglades.
While parked in the loading zone outside a terminal just looking for a place where they could see one closer, they also saw a woman in a Lincoln that was stalled in the loading zone. The little girl's father helped the woman get it started, but at the time, according to the article, he didn't know that the woman owned a cruise line. Of course during their meeting, Teresa Verrillo who is an owner of Celebration Cruise Line, heard why they were there. She not only arranged for them to see the ship, but she made sure the family of six got to sail on the ship (Bahamas Celebration) in a suite, and she also arranged for them to stay at the posh Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island making sure they had spending money for the trip.
That story is a small part of the Sun-Sentinel article, but it shows there are good people who do things not expecting to get anything in return. The little girl's father didn't expect to get anything for helping the woman start her Lincoln. The woman didn't expect to get anything because she gave away a trip. (There was no press release issued by the cruise line. The story came from the little girl's family when they told it to the Sun-Sentinel reporter as a part of a larger article about children with cancer.)
Something else good came from the incident, because it put Verrillo in touch with the South Florida-based group Children Battling Cancer, and now every month, Celebration Cruise Line quietly takes another child's family on a cruise to the Bahamas and treats them like royalty. But still, there's no press release from the cruise line. It's just something nice they do, expecting nothing in return.
