Ari started to get clumsy and uncoordinated on the soccer field, which was very unlike her. When her left eye began to droop that’s when we took her in to the pediatrician who in turn sent us right to the ER.

We went into the ER thinking it was just a really bad migraine, but the CAT scan would turn our world upside down. When they showed us the 6cm mass the size of a cutie orange lying horizontally on both hemispheres deep in her brain we knew life was going to be radically altered. Arianna started her cancer journey as a strong, muscular, healthy 165 pound young girl. We watched her slowly deteriorate to a 100 pound weak unable to walk, talk, or do a thing for herself child. Her skin would tear when we would pick her up from the mass amount of steroids she was on to try to control the swelling. Our other children would cry because they missed their parents and big sissy every time we were admitted. We felt like we were holding our breath hoping she was going to be ok. Trying every treatment we could get access to, desperate for something, anything to work.

Our home had become a hospital ward, once filled with hopes and dreams now filled with hospital equipment and eventually hospice care. She never complained or asked, “why me?” In fact the month after her diagnosis she asked the most selfless request. We were watching TV one day when she turned to me and said, “mama? If Jesus takes me home…” I stopped her and told her not to talk like that, that she was going to live and we were getting the best treatments to help her. But Ari was adamant and said “Mama, please just listen. If Jesus takes me home, promise me you’ll start something to help people who are going through hard times. Not just kids with cancer but everyone going through a hard time because I know what it is to go through a hard time. Promise me you’ll start something to help them.” She then said, “promise me if Jesus takes me home you’ll donate my brain, tumor, and spine to science research so no other kid has to go through what I’m going through.”

With tears in my eyes and my heart so heavy I had to promise Ari we would uphold the impossible request as a parent but the selfless mandate as a hero that she was. We honestly never thought we’d have to honor her requests not even when the last MRI came back with more progression and the doctor told us the tumor was growing down to her brain stem. Not even when we made the decision to go onto hospice. We didn’t think we’d have to honor her request, we just thought we were going on hospice to help us get the equipment Ari needed that the insurance wouldn’t cover. We were still seeking active treatments.

It wasn’t until we saw Arianna not able to communicate at all and the hospice nurse told us she was in transition that we realized she wasn’t going to make it. As we watched and held our sweet precious daughter in our arms, just like we did when she was a newborn, and watched her chest rise and fall as she took her last breath – it was then that the Aristrong Foundation took its first breath. Ari’s Foundation was birthed out of sacrificial love for others and we’ve had to take this impossible horrific pain and try to produce incredible power and purpose from it. Otherwise the pain will steal our purpose and Ari was too phenomenal of a person to let that happen. Everyday with heavy hearts we get up and try to uphold our motto of bringing hope and healing to hurting hearts and as we do it brings the very same to our hearts.

Arianna was ahead of her time. Her huge compassionate heart and love for others was and is inspiring. She continues to giveback as her organ donation sits and is used at Stanford University where they have been able to send tumor tissue to labs nationwide specializing in pediatric cancer research. They have used Ari’s cell line in various studies for clinical trials for children with various brain cancers. Her cell line is still alive today in the lab. That was and is the essence of Ari always serving, giving, hoping, loving. We miss her so much we can’t breathe sometimes, but we know she lives on with every family we get to help. Our lives are forever changed and we now have to recover, our other children miss their big sissy, but know the work she charged us to do must be carried on. So hand in hand our family works to uphold Ari’s vision of bringing hope and healing to hurting hearts.

-Nicole Villalobos, mother