He was horribly burned at 2. Zaid’s story raises nearly $300,000 in just days
There is so much that is incredible about the photo of Zaid, a young boy so badly burned that he hopes people don’t see him as a zombie.
He has no nose, no ears, his head is scarred, his eyelids sealed. His right arm and left hand are gone. His mouth is contorted, yet his voice is clear.
“When somebody meets you for the first time what do you hope they think?” Zaid is asked on a YouTube video that has received close to 1.3 million views in a matter of days.
“I hope they think I’m nice and that I’m not like a zombie,” the boy says in an even tone, “or like a horrible creature that’s trying to hurt people.”
Over the last 10 days, a GoFundMe page — that does not reveal Zaid’s last name or where he is from — has received close to $300,000 in donations from what the fund’s organizer, Christopher Ulmer, who hosts the video, called “functional surgeries” and “potential reconstructive procedures.”
That includes a $5,000 donation from Academy Award-winning actor Jared Leto, according to a story Thursday in the British tabloid, The Daily Mail.
Leto of late has been urging celebrities to perform good deeds as part of a broader #GoodThingsChallenge movement.
“Woah! We have raised over $50,000 for Zaid in only 90 minutes!” Ulmer wrote on October 17, two days after the page was formed. “I feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the kindness of our community. ...There will be no shortage of medical care required in Zaid’s future. The higher we can get this total, the more care he will be able to afford moving forward.”
Close to 15,000 donations have poured into the site. Ulmer did not respond, as of press time, to a request for an interview. According to his bio, Ulmer, who currently resides in Neptune Beach, Florida, graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a degree in media effects. Penn State confirms that a Christopher Ulmer did graduate from there in 2010 with a degree in media studies.
Then, in 2016, the one-time teacher founded a non-profit, SBSK, to put special children with disabilities in a positive light.
SBSK derives from Special Books by Special Kids, a book proposal he had originally pitched to multiple publishers, but which was turned down. Instead, he decided to start a non-profit and travel the country with a video camera. He sits, often in a blue shirt highlighting his blue eyes, talking to children with disabilities and posting videos on YouTube.
ABC News produced a segment in 2015 on Ulmer interviewing children. Although Ulmer does not provide Zaid’s last name or hometown, he does say that all money raised would go to Zaid’s mother, Otaidia Carrillo.
Carrillo appears on the video and an address for her was found in Galveston, Texas, home to one of the Shriners Hospitals for Children, which treats burn victims. A Shriner’s spokeswoman said she could not confirm whether Zaid had been a patient citing privacy concerns.
But in 2016, Texas attorney Steve Mostyn wrote about meeting Zaid, who ended up receiving help from the Glenda Jean Mostyn and Joe E. Moreno Educational Foundation, started by Mostyn and his wife, Amber.
“What Zaid went through instantly resonated with me, especially as a father,” Mostyn wrote at the time. He is since deceased. “I saw a bright, resilient kid, similar to my own son, and I knew we needed to help him and his mom get back on their feet. It was an incredibly humbling experience that I felt honored to be a part of.”
Mostyn indicated that the boy had been treated at the burn hospital in Galveston.
Zaid was burned at age 2 when a candle fell and spread across his bed.
Asked why he was willing to do an interview, he said, “To tell people that miracles do exist,” and he feels like a miracle. When others meet him, Zaid said, he knows his condition might initially make people sad and feel bad for him.
When he was burned, he said, doctors thought he would die. He is now a teenager.
“I hope it gives them hope and faith ...,” he said. “I would like (for them to) think, ‘Well, if he did it, I could do it, too. So courage and strength.”
Ulmer asked Zaid, “When you wake up, what is the first thing you think about?”
“It’s going to be a good day.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2019 at 5:50 PM with the headline "He was horribly burned at 2. Zaid’s story raises nearly $300,000 in just days."
