Nation & World News
Siblings collect 1 million soda tabs to help brother with leukemia
The next time you drink a can of soda, think about saving the tab. It could help save a life.
The siblings of 4-year-old Jacob Matthaei, knowing that their brother was battling cancer, decided to collect tabs and take them to the Ronald McDonald House. The charity takes the tabs to recycling plants, and it uses the money it receives to help families like Matthaei's.
So while Matthaei receives treatment for leukemia every month at the Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, his siblings set a goal to collect 1 million soda tabs, WTKR reported. They hit their goal in less than a year and turned in 790 pounds of tabs to the Ronald McDonald House, where the boy’s family lives while he gets treatment.
"I wanted to do something to help because I knew I couldn't cure cancer because I'm not a doctor," Jacob's older sister Brynn told WTKR. "I found out pop tabs help collect money, so I started raising them and asked my school first because a lot of the people I know and there's a lot of people at my school.”
"Seven-hundred ninety pounds of pop tabs, so it's no small feat," said Lisa Mitchell, vice president of programs at the Ronald McDonald House. "It usually takes families years to collect that much."
