Freshman partners with ARK Club to spread holiday cheer

Freshman Simran Mallik, then 9, knew something was wrong one day while swinging on the monkey bars: She couldn’t hold on. Later that day, she left a tetherball game with her left arm “hurting like crazy.”

Even after multiple trips to different doctors, Mallik and her family had inconclusive results on what could be wrong with her arm. It wasn’t until she had a biopsy a few weeks later that they discovered she had a tumor associated with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, and she began frequent stays in the hospital throughout the summer before fourth grade and the school year.

“I knew I’d get out of [the treatment] in nine months. I was afraid at some points, but it was all fine,” Mallik said. “Now, looking back on it, I see that it was a bigger deal than that.”

Five years later, Mallik is cancer-free and an active member of the Make-A-Wish Young Professionals Advisory Council Jr. Team. She has teamed up with Acts of Random Kindness (ARK) Club this holiday season to host a Letters to Santa fundraiser.

For every letter addressed to Santa and delivered to Macy’s, the department store will donate $1 to the Make-A-Wish foundation, which is dedicated to granting the wishes of ill children. Students and faculty alike may submit their letters to a box in the office until winter break begins.

Mallik brought the fundraiser to the school in an effort to contribute to Make-A-Wish, which helped fund her wish of traveling to Hawaii to see the aquatic life when she was 9 and finished with her cancer treatment. As a member of the Make-A-Wish Young Professionals Advisory Council Jr. Team, she received assistance from a board member of the foundation to start the event.

“All I really wanted to do was encourage others to donate to Make-A-Wish and spread awareness about rare childhood cancers,” Mallik said.

She joined the foundation’s fundraising efforts because the average wish costs about $7,500 to fulfill — a hefty sum considering that Make-A-Wish is a nonprofit organization. Since all fundraisers at school must be sponsored by a club, Mallik approached ARK, and the club agreed to help host the event.

Two weeks into the fundraiser, the box of letters already contained 120 messages to Santa, and Mallik expects to see more letters coming in.

“My goal is just to get as many letters as possible, and as many participants,” she said. “I hope everyone realizes that they can really make a difference by just taking two minutes to write a simple letter.”

For the fundraiser, ARK has been advertising outside meetings and writing letters to Santa during its Friday meetings in room 702. Under the leadership of senior co-presidents Michael Chyan, Michael Guo and Michelle Huang, ARK has already hosted a few “ARK-tivities” this year to spread happiness around campus.

The 20 or so club members pieced together a colorful paper chain on Unity Day “to show that we are all connected and that everyone is there for each other,” Guo said, and they spent a day attaching clothespins with compliments onto students’ bags.

“It was super fun to randomly hand out kindness to people I didn't even know,” sophomore club member Julia Miller said. “And it didn't matter if I knew them either; it was just about spreading kindness and spreading ARK around our campus.”

In December, SHS ARK will join ARK clubs from other schools to hold another holiday-themed event. Students plan to gather in downtown San Jose with assorted bags of toiletries, hand soaps and other assigned items to hand out to the homeless.

“The long-term project is to bring happiness to everyone in the school,” Guo said. “[We want] to make daily struggles more bearable. [We are] letting students know that they are not alone and that ARK will be there to support them.”

Make-A-Wish’s Letters to Santa drive that Mallik introduced to the club helps fulfill ARK’s mission to reach out to students, and it even goes beyond by positively affecting individuals outside of school.

“No other organization does this kind of thing where you’re granted a wish because of what you’ve been fighting,” Mallik said. “It’s a really unique thing, [and] I just wanted to give back.”