Shaun Murray and Randy Petru at the 1999 Worlds in Orlando (Pic: Lloyd Murray)

Randy Petru is your typical five-year-old boy. He enjoys bike riding, inline skating, swimming and skateboarding. He particularly likes to go boating, kneeboarding, tubing and, of course, wakeboarding on his Hyperlite Voyager, which he shares with his two older sisters, Dayna and Jennifer. As any kid his age should, Randy was happily charging through life without a care in the world. That's when it happened.

It was last May when Randy had a terrible accident. He was riding his bike down the street on a Friday afternoon when he tried to jump the curb and failed. He went down hard and hit the asphalt head first. His sister saw the accident and became very scared when she couldn't get Randy to wake up. Although he eventually regained consciousness, his mom wasted no time in getting him to the emergency room. Little did she know what a blessing this mishap would turn out to be.

Randy enjoying the Worlds (Pic: Lloyd Murray).

Although Randy seemed to be feeling all right, the emergency room staff thought it best to do a CAT scan just to be safe. The good news was that Randy's bout with the roadway had done no damage. The bad news was that there was every reason for concern.

The doctor informed Randy's stunned parents that he had a tumor located in the lower back portion of his head. That news earned Randy an immediate transfer to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. Whether or not the tumor was cancerous was unknown until they could perform surgery on little Randy. It was cancerous.

Young Randy was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma, a cancerous tumor that had attached itself to the cerebellum. If it hadn't been for Randy's bike crash, the tumor would have most certainly gone undetected. Every day thereafter would have decreased Randy's chances for beating the deadly disease.

Randy after his surgery (Pic: Tim Petru).

Surgery to remove the tumor went well and Randy was home within a week of his biking mishap. However, his road to recovery looked to be a long one. Radiation treatments to eradicate any possible traces of the cancer began immediately. Randy went through 31 treatments in the two months following his original surgery and is currently in the middle of a 48-week chemotherapy treatment.

Randy has been forced to cut back or eliminate the sports he loves so much because his joints are weak from the medication he's been taking. He's lost his hair from the chemotherapy and has started quite a hat collection as a result. He's even received special permission to wear hats at his school where they are not normally permitted.

Randy and Dad in the hospital (Pic: Kristy Petru).

"Although we try to keep everything upbeat and positive for Randy, we have also been completely honest with him," said Tim Petru, Randy's father. "It was very difficult to talk to him about his cancer. We told him that the bad cancer cells were trying to kill his good cells. We're in a fight to kill these bad cells."

A courageous Randy responds, "We're going to kick these bad cells butts out of our house!"

Randy and Mom in the hospital (Pic: Tim Petru).

To help Randy accomplish this, his family has been trying to surround him with inspiring things of greatness. One such inspiration is wakeboarding's Shaun Murray. Shaun is Randy's favorite wakeboarder. Randy likes how he does his power slides, especially in the Six Pack video. It was this quest for inspiration that eventually caused Randy's path to intersect with Shaun's.

Shaun Murray's mom, Roma, received a call at her real estate office in early October. It was Tim Petru following up on an Internet link he had explored on WakeWorld.com. The link description read, "The Photography of Lloyd Murray." It led Tim to Roma's website, which contained wakeboarding pictures taken by Lloyd Murray, Shaun's dad.

The Petru family: (left to right) Jennifer, Randy, Dad, Dayna, Mom and Elizabeth.

"He told me about his wakeboarding family and their admiration of Shaun," recalls Roma. "He spoke of their love of the sport and how much fun they had had watching some of Shaun's videos. Then I found myself with a huge lump in my throat as Tim began to tell me about Randy. The story was not long, but it was enough to capture my heart. Tim was on a mission to collect hats for Randy."

Roma made a call to her son, Shaun, and that was all it took to set things in motion. Not only would Shaun see to it that Randy received a signed hat, but he'd also ask other riders to do the same. Shaun called Randy personally to offer encouragement and make an attempt to, as Roma put it, "become a real person in Randy's life."

Next

 Return To WakeWorld Article Archives