By Amanda Thomason August 19, 2021 at 2:53pm
Polish Olympian Maria Andrejczyk won a silver medal in women’s javelin at the Tokyo Olympics, but she’s proved she has a heart of gold after using her platform to help a child in need.
The 25-year-old athlete announced on Aug. 11 that she would be raising money for Miłoszek Małysa, an 8-month-old Polish boy who desperately needs expensive heart surgery in the U.S.
And the way she planned to do that was by auctioning off her medal to the highest bidder.
“Miłoszek … has a serious heart defect, he needs an operation,” Andrejczyk wrote on Facebook. “It’s for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal.”
The boy’s family had already raised about half the necessary amount to pay for the procedure and travel costs, which came to $385,000, according to Fox News.
Andrejczyk’s decision to auction off her medal wasn’t a difficult one, as she had her sights set on what truly mattered.
“The true value of a medal always remains in the heart,” Andrejczyk said, according to The Times of London. “A medal is only an object, but it can be of great value to others.
“This silver can save lives, instead of collecting dust in a closet. That is why I decided to auction it to help sick children.”
But she wasn’t the only one with a generous heart.
After all was said and done, the medal was sold to a company called Żabka — but Andrejczyk’s post and Miloszek’s plight had received so much attention that the family had received many additional donations.
“On Friday I received this wonderful information, and due to the fact that you dears have already done wonders and joint forces have paid more than the equivalent of the initial medal to the [Miloszek] account — I decided to end the auction so that our [Miloszek] will receive the whole amount as soon as possible and can fly to the USA,” Andrejczyk wrote in an update.
“The winner, and at the same time, the company I will be eternally grateful to is the company Żabka.”
But the company had decided to donate money for the surgery and let Andrejczyk keep her hard-earned medal.
“We were moved by the beautiful and noble gesture of our Olympian, so we decided to support the collection of funds for the sick Miloszek,” Żabka wrote on Facebook.
“We also decided that the silver medal from Tokyo will remain with Ms. Maria, who showed how great she is.”
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she’s strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
As of January 2019, Amanda has written over 1,000 stories for The Western Journal but doesn’t really know how. Graduating from California State Polytechnic University with a MA in Rhetoric/Composition and TESOL, she wrote her thesis about metacognitive development and the skill transfer between reading and writing in freshman students.
She has a slew of interests that keep her busy, including trying out new recipes, enjoying nature, discussing ridiculous topics, reading, drawing, people watching, developing curriculum, and writing bios. Sometimes she has red hair, sometimes she has brown hair, sometimes she’s had teal hair.
With a book on productive communication strategies in the works, Amanda is also writing and illustrating some children’s books with her husband, Edward.
Location
Austin, Texas
Languages Spoken
English und ein bißchen Deutsch
Topics of Expertise
Faith, Animals, Cooking