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One Lehigh family had a dream come true when the Sunshine Foundation helped them purchase items for a sensory room.

Lehigh resident Carrie Vargas said she looked up the Sunshine Foundation online and applied as her 10-year-old son, Keith, has autism and is nonverbal.

“It is so wonderful,” she said of the sensory room. “It is a blessing.”

The blessing comes from it being a huge benefit, as he is also home schooled.

The Batchelor Foundation provided the Sunshine Foundation with a grant to make Vargas’s dream come true.

His sensory room includes such items as a Samsung Galaxy tablet, a SmartTV, a gaming chair, Nintendo items, crash pad, foam mat, special lighting, weighted vest, motor skill toys, books and a Lego building block table.

“Families give us estimates of what they would like to have for their child. We fund it for them and they put it together,” Sunshine Development Director of Development Rich Mergo said.

Vargas said she can download an app that helps Keith communicate with her. She said Keith also enjoys stepping on the sensory tiles and really enjoys the lights being turned on at night.

The Lego table is used for his therapy to help with motor skills.

“He is more happy,” Vargas said, adding that he is thriving.

Sunshine Foundation began in 1976 by police officer Bill Sample in the Philadelphia area.

One of his stations was at the children’s hospital in Philadelphia where he always made kids laugh by telling jokes.

“When families would come in for hospital visits, he would try to loosen them up by making them smile and laugh while parents were talking to hospital staff,” he said.

Mergo said one of the boys at the hospital had leukemia, which at that time usually did not survive. Sample found out that a little boy, Bobby, really wanted to play in the snow.

“Bill wanted to make that little thing happen,” Mergo said, adding that Sample took the little boy and his family to Pennsylvania for the weekend where they played in the snow, built snowmen and went sledding. “That’s how it all started by making that first dream come true. Bill said he wanted to do this for more kids.”

He said that Bobby’s mom is still in touch with the Sunshine Foundation and has shared that the weekend in Pennsylvania was one of their happiest moments with Bobby.

“He did pass away a few months after that dream,” Mergo said.

The Sunshine Foundation became the first wish-granting nonprofit in the United States and has since granted more than 41,500 wishes. The foundation is still based in Philadelphia with five full-time employees and three part-time.

When Readers’ Digest did a story and NBC did as well in the early ’80s, Sunshine Foundation became a national organization after they received submissions from all over the country.

“We work on a national level . . . dreams throughout the country,” Mergo said.

Now there are kids on the waiting list from 42 states.

“We have hundreds of children on the waiting list. We are always looking for new partners,” he said.

The organization helps children ages 3 to 18 who have severe, or profound physical, developmental, intellectual challenges, or trauma from physical or sexual abuse, as those conditions affect their quality of life for the rest of their lives.

Families contact Sunshine Foundation through their social media, website, social workers, or their child life advocate in the hospital.

“They reach out to us and apply,” Mergo said. “They go through an approval process . . . medical information and then the doctor has to sign off that it is a chronic illness. We have income limitations. We work with lower income families to make sure to help as many people as possible that can’t do it for themselves.”

Mergo started working for the Sunshine Foundation in 2009 at the Dream Village, located near Disney in Orlando.

“It’s a little village in the forest,” he said, a peaceful and quite area to escape as a family and bond. “I loved working there. You got to meet every family and talk to them and learn about struggles, and at the end of the visit, learn about what that week meant to them.”

Mergo said the experience made him realize that problems in his own life are nothing compared to what the families go through on a daily basis.

“It makes you appreciate what you have in life in general,” he said.

The community can provide a helping hand through its website, www.sunshinefoundation.org, or through www.adoptadream.org. Mergo said individuals can go on the website and see children’s specific dreams that are on the waiting list and adopt a dream.

Individuals can also become involved in the monthly subscription program called Dream, which provides individuals the ability to contribute as much as they can.

“It helps us answer dreams to hundreds of children,” Mergo said. “The community of monthly givers helps make a bigger impact. They can make a difference in children throughout the year.”

The foundation also relies on volunteers to help them spread the word to reach families and potential supporters.

“With the holidays coming up, we definitely can use as much support as possible,” Mergo said. “We have over 230 children on our waiting list right now. Each dream is anywhere between $2,000 to $6,000 per dream. Any help is greatly needed, especially during the pandemic. So many kids got put on hold because of the pandemic. We have a pretty big backlog of children to get their dreams answered.”