One young boy in Red Deer received a surprise of heroic proportions this week as Red Deer’s Emergency Services members took the time to surprise him for his third birthday. 

Sinead Holstein explained that her son, Will, was desperately looking forward to his birthday party that was supposed to take place with friends and family at a local play centre. As things have closed down to address the pandemic, obviously those plans had to be put on hold. 

“My husband and I were getting his gifts together for his birthday and I just broke down  because I didn’t know how to make this better for him. Leading up to his birthday, I kept asking him what he wanted to do, doing things as a family but he just kept saying he wanted Marshall from Paw Patrol. 

“So I reached out to the Red Deer Fire Fighters Association and just asked if someone could just even walk by the house in a Sparky suit and wave to him from the window, and he’d be happy with that but they went so above and beyond,” she said. 

“They coordinated with RCMP, they coordinated with Municipal Enforcement to make the parade that you see in the video.”

The video she’s referring to is one that has since gone viral, with thousands of shares and as many or more comments, which showcases a parade of emergency service vehicles in her Red Deer cul-de-sac, all there to wave and send good wishes to her kids. 

“My son didn’t want anything to do with it at first, he was playing with his toys and he was happy and we told him, “Come on, go to the window, Will, look!” and he wouldn’t come yet, but we said, “Look it’s a firetruck and a police car” and he said, “Oh mummy I love police cars!” and ran to the door, and my daughter and him were waving at all of the cars… you can see Will pointing in the videos and he was just so excited,” Sinead said.

She said even talking about the event makes her tear up, and that she was filled with gratitude for the dedication of Red Deer’s emergency service teams to show up and help create a once-in-a-lifetime experience for her kids. 

“It was such a grand gesture for a boy that they don’t know, to make his birthday a bit better. We’re all stuck inside, we don’t get to see the people outside of our family - it just meant the world to all of us. And it seems like it meant a lot to the community around us, based on the comments and the shares and the likes and all that,” she said.

The Holstein family was thrilled to see that people were only leaving positive comments on the shares, and that people were just sharing in their joy from the event. 

“I was a little bit reluctant as it started blowing up to read some of the comments, but every single comment was good. In one post alone, there’s over 1000 shares, and probably close to 1000 comments and they’re all positive. That’s unheard of,” she said, adding, “It’s touching people, and a lot of those comments were from people saying things like “I’m crying, and I don’t even know this boy”.”

“It just shows that it’s what we needed in this moment.”

Red Deer Mayor Tara Veer even reached out via Facebook to tell Will that she had “spoken to the Paw Patrol Mayors, and on behalf of all of them they wished him a happy birthday”, and Sinead said her son counted this as one of his favourite parts of the day. 

She said she and her family are extremely grateful for the kindness shown by these folks through a really difficult time.

“They don’t get props like this very often, so I want people to know that the RCMP, the Emergency Services of Red Deer, the Municipal Enforcement - they all stepped up. They coordinated this and took the time to do this. I think I counted 15 or 16 cop cars..for them to do that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and dedication.”