PROVO — Instead of getting presents for her first birthday party last month, 7-year-old Alia Reber asked people to sponsor rubber duckies as part of Make-A-Wish Foundation's annual Ducky Derby.
Alia was born with cranial nerve abnormalities and became involved with Make-A-Wish last year when her condition worsened.
Nearly 200 people came to her birthday party, helping her raise more than any other wish kid this year — about $2,200.
On Saturday, she got to see those duckies race at Seven Peaks Water Park's Lazy River.
In five different heats, a sea of 3,500 yellow bathtime friends floated along the river, taking up the whole width of the pool and stretching out about 15 feet. Five volunteers stood behind the ducks in the water to make sure they kept going.
Alia, clad in pink sunglasses and a bright blue shirt, also followed the ducks around each loop. Every few steps, she would stop and wave at the ducks and even stooped down to hug many of them at the end of one of the races.
"She's afraid of the water, but she wanted to jump in," said Alia's mother, Suzanne.
The first 20 ducks from each of the five heats to pass through a hole in a wire fence finish line made it to the final race. The sponsor of the winning duck, an overwhelmed Kimberly Tanner, received a 2008 Chevy Aveo donated by Jerry Seiner, who has donated a car for the derby every year.
Tanner is also one of the volunteers for Make-A-Wish. She been able to grant five wishes in her last three years of service and said the whole process is "magical."
"I look up to them," Tanner said of the wish kids. "When I'm having a bad day, I think it's nothing compared to what they're going through, but you'd never know it because they always have a smile on their face."
To celebrate the 21st year of the derby, 100 bigger duckies (about three times the size of the little duckies) were also raced.
Sponsors paid $100 for the big ducks and $5 for a little duck.
Christine Sharer, who has been with the foundation since its inception 25 years ago, has been to every derby and even came up with the idea. She said over the years the fundraiser has helped hundreds of children's wishes come true.
But her favorite part of the event is seeing the wish families who come.
This year about 900 families attended, including 7-year-old Wyatt Stanley. Wyatt watched the races when he wasn't playing in the park.
From the outside all that shows of his heart condition is a 3-inch scar in the middle of his chest.
But Wyatt has had three open-heart surgeries and just had a heart catheter procedure on Thursday.
His wish to meet SpongeBob SquarePants was granted a couple of years ago about the same time he stopped responding to medication he takes for an illness doctors don't know much about: protein-losing enteropathy. At times, his family thought his life was over.
"You pretend none of it's true and it's just a story," Debbie Stanley said, "and then every once in a while, you bawl your eyes out and then you pull yourself back together again."
That's the hardest part for Austin and Dallas, Wyatt's 13-year-old twin brothers. They hate to see their parents sad, but they said the Make-A-Wish trip brought their family closer together and was the first time since Wyatt was born that they went on a vacation outside the state.
Austin said the family has to give up a lot to pay for Wyatt's medical expenses and may be paying $150,000 for a heart transplant soon.
But on Saturday, the family was able to just have fun and splash around in the water, and the twins thought the race was "so cool."
Not all wish kids have such severe conditions.
Krachel Greenwood, spokeswoman for Make-A-Wish in Utah, said the organization is for children 2 1/2 to 17 years old who have a condition that is life threatening but does not necessarily mean they will die.
"It's not their last dying wish," Greenwood said. "It gives them something to live for, something to look forward to."
e-mail: slenz@desnews.com