Poland’s golden girl, Maria Andrejczyk, who won a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics decided to auction off her medal to raise funds for the surgery of an 8-month-old baby.
The javelin thrower finished in second place behind India’s Neeraj Chopra with an attempt of 64.61m. She won a medal for her country that day but two weeks later Maria would be winning hearts all over the world for her big-hearted gesture.
The star took to Facebook to announce that she would be taking part in a fundraiser to help an 8-month-old baby survive.
The 8-month-old infant in question, Miloszek Malysa, has been diagnosed with serious heart disease. He needs to be operated on but the parents of the baby are being turned away from every hospital in Europe due to the complicated nature of the surgery.
Stanford University Medical Center in the US is the only hospital that has agreed to perform the surgery but it would cost millions. The parents of the baby unable to raise the funds all by themselves turned to online fundraising.
They could only raise half of the amount when the infant’s health started deteriorating further. It came to the notice of Maria, who herself is a cancer survivor. She decided to do her bit and auction off her most prized possession.
“Miloszek has a serious heart defect and he needs an operation urgently. Hew already has a head start from Kubus – a boy who didn’t make it in time but whose amazing parents decided to pass on the funds they collected. This is how I want to help too. It is for him that I am auctioning off my Olympic silver medal. It didn’t take me too long to decide, it was the first fundraiser I had entered and I knew it was the right one.”
Zabka Polska, which is one of the biggest supermarket chains in Poland, won the auction after bidding $125,000. Instead of keeping the medal, Zabka gave Maria her medal back and donated the entire sum to aid in Miloszek’s surgery.
