When 5-year-old Sunshine Oelfke discovered that her classmate couldn’t afford milk at school, she didn’t think twice about using her entire piggy bank to try and help.
5-Year-Old Girl Empties Piggy Bank to Pay for Her Classmates’ Milk
As she sat on her living room floor in Ishpeming, Michigan, her grandmother, Jackie Oelfke, watched her lining up stacks of nickels, pennies, dimes and crinkled bills that was then put into her backpack.
“That piqued my curiosity,” Jackie reported to the CBS News. “Nobody messes with the piggy bank.”
When she asked her grand child what she was doing, Sunshine told her she was taking it to school.
“I’m going to take it for milk money. I’m taking it for my friend Layla,” she explained herself. “She doesn’t get milk — her mom doesn’t have milk money while I do.”
Together, they went to Birchview Elementary School to see the principal and gave her the $30 she had saved up.
According to the news outlet, there are 20 kids in Sunshine’s class and about half couldn’t afford the milk, which costs $0.45 a carton, adding up to $180 a month for those students combined.
After she dropped her off at school, Jackie posted a video on Facebook about her granddaughter’s selfless action, which had since received over 5,000 times view.
People then offered to help the other students who couldn’t afford milk during snack time. It inspired Jackie to take things a step further and try to raise $700 to cover the milk’s cost for the entire semester.
Within one week, according to CBS, she had raised over $1,000 through a GoFundMe page she set up, which would afford every student in Sunshine’s class the chance to receive free milk all year long.
“She doesn’t understand the impact she’s made,” said Jackie. “But now she knows she can do whatever she puts her mind to.”
The three-year-old went missing about two weeks prior, when her father left her outside at 3 AM as punishment for not drinking her milk.
UPDATE: Body Found, Believed To Be 3-Year-Old Special Needs Child Who Was Forced To Stand Outside At 3 AM
Richardson, TX – On Sunday afternoon, Richardson police officially announced that they believed they had found the body of the missing three-year-old Sherin Mathews.
The child, who had mental disabilities which render her unable to communicate, was reported missing by her father about two weeks ago, according to Fox News
Detectives from the Richardson Police Department discovered a body around 11 AM on Sunday in a culvert beneath a road near her father’s residence.
Police believed it to be Sherin’s body but could not be certain until there is a positive identification by “proper officials.”
Questions had surrounded the adopted child’s disappearance, after her father said that he left her outside at 3 AM to punish her for not drinking her milk.
He reported her missing about five hours after he left her outside, in an area that he described as populated by coyotes.
Detectives also discovered on the night Sherin disappeared that someone had driven the family SUV away from their home in Richardson, and didn’t return until an hour later.
Wesley Mathews had also changed his story about Sherin’s disappearance since he first talked to police. Mathews did not report to police until days after her disappearance that he had done laundry before he reported her missing.
Sherin’s mother was reportedly asleep when she went missing.
Police had used search warrants to seize multiple items of potential evidence, including a vacuum cleaner, trash bags, hair fibers, cell phones, and laptops.
Other items that were seized which may have significant evidentiary value include a blue string, dark hair-like fibers, vacuum contents, two yellow gloves, dish scrubber inside two grocery bags, the washer and dryer, and surveillance video from the neighbors.
Other seized items included receipts, grass, and other debris from three vehicles belonging to the Mathews family. DNA swabs had been collected by officers from Wesley Mathews and his wife.
Sherin had been adopted by the Mathews in June, 2016, after she were abandoned in her native country of India.
Wesley Mathews had been charged with child endangerment but had been released from jail on bond. He is currently wearing an ankle monitor to keep track of his location.
The couple’s four-year-old daughter is right now in the custody of a family friend. Child Protective Services said that they are familiar with the family but would not release any additional details.