Lemons and Lemonade

Abstract

Rich Maiore was 28 years old the day he first heard of Alex Scott. Rich's day had started out like any other. He worked in marketing and had driven to a convenience store in his territory to stack soda bottles in a promotional display. One by one, he turned the bottles so that their labels lined up just so. And then Rich happened to look up. On the store's television, the Today show was introducing a little girl with a beaming smile and bald head who, Rich learned, had been fighting cancer since she was one. Like a lot of kids, Alex wanted to set up a lemonade stand in her front yard. But Alex's purpose was unusual: She aimed to give all of the profits to doctors so they could “help other kids like they helped me.” Four-year old Alex raised $2,000 in one day. And then she raised twice that. Soon, other children in the neighborhood were raising money, too, and by the time she was asked to tell her story on Today, the goal was to raise a million dollars for pediatric cancer research. “Honestly, I felt ashamed,” Rich told me. “Here was this little girl doing something so incredible. What was I doing? Adjusting soda bottles. I realized I wanted to help other people.” The instinct to help others runs as deep in human nature as any other. But as we chase other goals, it's easy to neglect.