A busted golf cart comforted an NC toddler fighting cancer. Strangers helped get it back
When a stranger rode off with the Bagley family’s golf cart parked in their driveway Wednesday night, they weren’t stealing an ordinary golf cart.
Since the Bagleys’ 2-year-old daughter Sara Beth was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of four months, they’ve taken her for golf cart rides around the neighborhood daily, sometimes multiple times a day.
“I know this may not seem like a huge deal but this run-down golf cart is one of my two-year old cancer warrior’s only constant sources of joy and comfort in this world,” Sara Beth’s mom, Rachel Bagley, explained in a Facebook post Thursday, asking for people to be on the lookout for the green golf cart with a broken backseat.
The Johnston County Sheriff’s Office was alerted, and people suggested ideas in the comment section, including posting on the Nextdoor app and starting a GoFundMe so that people could donate money toward a new golf cart.
By Friday night, a woman living in Benson, about 30 minutes south of the Bagleys’ home in Clayton, notified Benson police she had seen the golf cart. They, in turn, passed the message to the sheriff’s office, who gave the Bagleys the good news.
The next morning, Rachel’s husband Adam drove to Benson to bring the golf cart back home.
“She asks at least three to four times a day, doesn’t care if it’s freezing cold or if it’s swelteringly hot, but she wants to go on golf cart rides,” Rachel Bagley said in an interview Saturday after Sara Beth was reunited with the golf cart. “That was her first words to me this morning, ‘golf cart ride Momma.’”
Weekly chemotherapy trips
This week will mark two years since Sara Beth began chemotherapy on Nov. 25, 2019, to reduce the size of her tumor, which is located in her hypothalamus, a part of the brain that is responsible for producing hormones that regulate critical functions like body temperature, heart rate, hunger, sleep and thirst, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Doctors told Rachel Bagley and her husband early on the tumor was inoperable, due to its location in the center of the brain and the risk of damage to important brain functions, she said.
The first year of chemotherapy was particularly harsh on Sara Beth, as doctors gave her a stronger treatment that was expected to be more effective in shrinking the tumor, but also made her sick more often, especially in the car. The first car seat she used was angled in a way that, due to a balance disorder caused by the tumor, made Sara Beth feel like she was falling back, Rachel Bagley said.
As an infant, Sara Beth was constantly crying when she wasn’t sleeping or eating, and wanted to be held and moved around all the time.
The old, beat-up golf cart, which Adam brought home in the fall of 2019, and which the Bagleys initially thought wouldn’t be of much use to them, ended up being the source of some much-needed relief for both Sara Beth and her parents.
“She didn’t like it when we sat down and held her, she wanted us up and walking her around, so she was a very exhausting baby for us,” Rachel Bagley said. “The golf cart was the one place where I could sit down or Adam could sit down and hold her, and she would be happy.”
Daily golf cart rides became a ritual: every night after the Bagleys put Liam, their 4-year-old son, to bed, they’d take Sara Beth for several laps around the neighborhood. And despite her speech being delayed due to hearing loss caused by the chemotherapy, one of the first words she learned to say was “golf cart.”
Neighbors and strangers come to family’s aid
When the golf cart was stolen on Wednesday, a neighbor of the Bagleys offered their golf cart to ensure Sara Beth could keep on riding.
The number of golf carts available to her doubled two days later, when a stranger named Rob Hartshorn, from Fuquay-Varina, gave the Bagleys a call while they were at Duke Children’s Hospital in Durham for Sara Beth’s weekly chemotherapy.
Hartshorn, who told them his twin brother had died from leukemia at the age of 13, and said he remembered making the weekly trips to Duke for chemotherapy, told the Bagleys there was something he wanted to give them, and asked what time they would return to Clayton.
When they got back home, Sara Beth asked for a golf cart ride. Five minutes later, Hartshorn pulled into their driveway with his own golf cart and said he wanted the Bagleys to keep it.
“It was so generous and I’m just overwhelmed by the kindness of people,” Rachel Bagley said. “I feel like for that one mean thing that was done, there have been 200-plus people that have been kind and shown kindness. We were feeling so dejected and disappointed in people, but I feel like the community came out and showed us ‘this is who we are.’”
On Saturday, the Bagleys took Sara Beth for a ride in her old golf cart, but Rachel had to push it from behind, since the key was still in the evidence locker at the Benson Police Department.
In addition to the generosity of their neighbors, and Hartshorn, whose golf cart the Bagleys intend to return, the family heard from Sasser Golf Carts, a dealership and repair shop in Goldsboro. They, too, had heard what had happened, and wanted to give Sara Beth a new golf cart, but after hearing the original cart had been found and was slightly damaged, agreed to pick it up from the Bagleys’ home and repair it.
A GoFundMe started by a friend of the Bagleys raised, in a couple of days, more than $11,000 from over 200 donations. The family will spend some of the money on repairing the golf cart, give some of it to Children’s Cancer Partners of the Carolinas, a support organization that has reimbursed some of the Bagleys’ food and travel costs, and use the remaining funds to pay off outstanding medical costs, she said.
Sara Beth’s treatment will continue while her parents consider what their next steps are in the battle with her daughter’s cancer, which has gone on now for more than two years. But in the meantime, Rachel said, they are glad her beloved golf cart is back.
“It seems so silly, and trivial,” Rachel said, of the golf cart being stolen. “But it’s not for her.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2021 at 5:08 PM.
