On behalf of our family, we’d like to thank everyone at Firefly for all of your love and support for Sofia and for celebrating her life and her light. In particular, our deep thanks to Dr. Amanda Kelly and Jesse Ogas for your leadership and compassion and to Allison who was such an important part of Sofi’s life.

We witnessed firsthand the incredible work that Firefly does every day and the enormous impact you have in the lives of so many families. We also saw very clearly how much demand there is in our community for your services and the tremendous lengths you go to in order to meet that demand. But to continue doing so, Firefly needs the passion and support of all of us. So, I’d like to thank all of you because you made the support Sofi received from Firefly possible.

As a way to honor Sofi, we have established an endowment fund for Firefly Autism at the Denver Foundation. It’s our way of trying to help other kids like Sofi to receive the love and support from the dedicated team at Firefly.

Sofi was very much a true firefly. Her light shone brightly everywhere she went. While her time with us was short, I know that her light will shine forever in the hearts of everyone who knew her. She was a bright, kind and passionate girl. She had an amazing singing voice that resembled that of her favorite singer, Whitney Houston. She had been a member of the Miami Children’s Chorus and joined the Denver Children’s Chorus when we moved here. She loved koalas and always carried one of her stuffed koalas with her, plus a couple of little ones in her pockets. She was a fierce advocate for those who were picked on, discriminated against or bullied. She had a great sense of humor and loved to LOL as she often said. In fact, she was one of the biggest ever fans of my dad jokes. Ok fine…she was the only fan of my dad jokes. 

So again, my deep thanks to all of you and to our Firefly family. A quote from Sofi’s favorite book, Wonder: “When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind.”