Group Of Minn. Officers Rally Around Cop Families Dealing With Cancer
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A group of police officers is answering a call for help from some of their own and accomplishing something great for Minnesota.
Officers in the Northwestern School of Staff and Command are raising money to help the families of two law enforcement professionals. Both have had cancers and other hardships in their families.
One of those families, a police chief from Cambridge, has dealt with cancer in not one but two of his children.
Chief Timothy Dwyer has seen a lot in his nearly 30 years in law enforcement, but nothing prepared him for dealing with his 11 year old daughter, Abby, being diagnosed with a rare Leukemia in 2009.
"She had three full years of very intense chemotherapy," Dwyer said.
The treatments cost the Dwyer family more than $20,000, but eventually Abby was cancer-free.
Then, just when there was hope, in 2013 their older son, Aaron, got all too familiar news:
He had stage 3 Lymphoma.
"I was in shock. I could' believe what I was hearing. How could this happen to a family once let alone twice?" Dwyer said.
Aaron responded well to treatment his first year and doctors thought he was in the clear, but in January his cancer returned.
Now, fellow police officers from around the state are rallying to raise money to help Aaron beat cancer once and for all.
"I've cried enough but this is definitely something that brought tears to our family," Dwyer said.
Aaron is taking a medical leave from school while he waits to have a bone marrow transplant. He will still graduate from high school with honors in May.
Dwyer says he a proud father of his not one, but two, brave fighters.
"If I could give to Aaron my bone marrow and my blood, I would do that," Dwyer said. "Our hearts go out to any family that has to go through anything like this."
Aaron has found a match and will be having a bone marrow transplant next month.
For more on the other family dealing with cancer -- and to donate -- click here.
