Hundreds of Strangers Send Gifts to Make Teens' Wishes Come True

"Excuse me while I break down," Cheri Guy's TikTok video began. Wiping away tears, the Las Vegas high school teacher shared a heart-tugging "Wishmas" list to which 950 students contributed wishes for simple items, such as a bag of chips "so I won't feel hungry," a gift card to help a parent with groceries, "slippers to protect me from the cold," and a physics book for an aspiring astrophysicist. Many students at Guy's school are in the U.S. foster system or living in poverty. For the past decade, school staff have filled the students' wishes. This year, "even if every teacher picked one student, we couldn't cover everything." Until Guy posted a video online. Soon enough, hundreds of packages from strangers across the U.S. landed at her local post office. "One of the most incredible things about Wishmas is these kids are realizing that they are loved, and not just by the staff at school, but by strangers around the country [who] care about them and believe in them," she told Today. A sign in Guy's classroom reads, "One person can change a world." She explains, "It used to say, 'One person can change the world,' but I changed it to 'a' world, because it's not about changing the whole world. That's what overwhelms us. But if you can just think about, 'What can I do for one person?' That's changing a world and if we could all do that? Just imagine what our society would turn into."

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