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community Miracle Child Gives Back at Dance Marathon Photos by Photography 35 By Marissa Prieto Family Chairperson Caity Cutter, right, looks on as Andrew Soto, 17, gets his dancer number prior to the Children's Miracle Network Dance Marathon at the University of Florida. 82 HOME Living In the Heart of Florida LivingInTheHeartOfFlorida.com
Miracle Child Gives Back At Dance Marathon
Marissa Prieto
If you saw Andrew Soto dancing for 26.2 straight hours at the recent University of Florida Dance Marathon, you would never guess he was born with pulmonary atresia, a heart disease in which the pulmonary valve isn’t formed properly and fails to open.
At six days old, doctors were able to perform open heart surgery on Andrew and repair the valve.
Now 17 years later, Andrew is giving back to the organization that helped save his life – for all the right reasons.
More than 700udents took part in this year’s Dance Marathon, a fundraising event that supports the division of the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) at Shands Children’s Hospital. The 26-hour event is full of activities, dances and speeches from different CMN miracle children. The dancers stay on their feet for all 26 hours to try to understand the pain that the children of CMN suffer. Usually, the miracle children are provided a hotel and go to rest after they make their speech.
Andrew decided to break the mold this year – he wanted to be one of the dancers.
Andrew and his family have been participating in Dance Marathon for more than 10 years. Every year, they drive up from their home in Ocala to stay connected with CMN.
“The kids that come and participate in the Dance Marathon always want to come back because they have such a great time,” said Mary Soto, Andr ew’s mother.
Andrew’s parents, Fidel and Mary, along with his brother, David, 24, and sister, Emilia, 10, dropped in from time to time to support Andrew in his dancing endeavor.
The miracle families are treated to a dinner the night of the event, so the Soto’s got to spend time with Andrew then, too, Mary said.
Andrew was so devoted to his cause that he didn’t even sit down to eat his meal.
“They took us to the dinner in a party bus, so it was easy for me to stand up on the car ride there,” Andrew said. “I signed up to be a dancer and I wanted to do my part. Once I was committed to the idea, I was going to stand up the whole time no matter what.” A four-year Dance Marathon veteran gave Andrew the inspiration to stick through it because even though Andrew, like all the dancers, admits that he got tired at points, it’s worth it in the end.
This year, Andrew was paired up with the Delta Zeta sorority and the Kappa Sigma fraternity, which sponsored him to dance. Next year, he plans on dancing again and getting more of his friends involved and raising money himself.
A huge Gator fan, Andrew can’t wait to get tod be more involved with Dance Marathon, which raised more than $500,000 this year for CMN.
“It was really great to dance and learn more about the program and the different miracle families that were there,” Andrew said. “I look forward to doing it next year. It will be really fun, and I have a little background knowledge now, so I think I’ll be more prepared.”
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