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Though the story circulated in email identifies the dying child as Billy instead of by his actual name, this Internet tale is a relatively truthful, if overwritten, account. It's also (with the exception of the child's name) lifted word-for-word from the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Example: Not that we're going to swear that all Chicken Soup stories are necessarily true, but this one is. In 1981, Frank Bopsy Salazar, a 7-year-old dying of leukemia, became the first wish child helped by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This boy from Phoenix had three wishes: to be a fireman, to ride in a hot air balloon, and to go to Disneyland. He ultimately achieved all three; the fulfillment of his first wish, the fireman one, was described by the Make-A-Wish Foundation in their account of events: Bopsy went on to experience his hot-air balloon ride and a trip to Disneyland. While in Anaheim, he was treated with every courtesy a visiting fireman could wish for from his Southern California colleagues, including being chauffeured to and from the Los Angeles airport in a fire truck and escorted around the park by two of his fellow firefighters from the Anaheim fire department. As for the more fantastic claim made in the e-mail — that Phoenix fireman climbed through the child's hospital window on the night Bopsy died — this too holds true. It was only five firemen instead of the sixteen of the Chicken Soup version, but they did indeed park the hook and ladder below his window, then climb up the ladder and into his room:
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