Friday, December 16, 2011 By Aly Cappaert
Joe Tourte, left, and Dyamond Ott, right. -
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With
finals being only one week away, students at Ankeny High School usually
devote most of their attention on their studying and plans for winter
break. This year, though, attention from the students and even teachers
has been on two very important people that have made a lasting impact on
the town, Dyamond Ott and Joe Tourte. On the evening of December 14,
and into the early morning hours of December 15, the stories of these
two wonderful people didn’t only get out to the whole town of Ankeny,
not only to the people of Iowa, but to people throughout the entire
country.
Dyamond
Ott, a 2011 graduate of Ankeny High School, passed away at the age of
18 on Sunday, December 11, 2011 after a lifelong battle with health
problems. As a teenager, she went through more than most other teens
could ever imagine. She fought through many health battles including
cancer and a liver and kidney transplant. Dyamond was loved by many and
an influence to many students throughout the high school, whether they
were close with her or not. She was a positive person and has left such a
positive impact on this town.
Joe
Tourte is a current student at Ankeny High School who always has a
smile on his face that is enough to brighten everyone’s day.
Unfortunately, Joe hasn’t been in school to show off his contagious
smile for the past month. Instead, he has been at the University of Iowa
Hospitals where he is awaiting a heart transplant. Students around the
school have been showing support for Joe by raising money to help pay family expenses, and hopefully that’ll get him back to school with his
classmates.
On
the evening of December 14, many people throughout the community
attended a candlelight ceremony that was held in honor of Dyamond Ott,
which then started a mission for Ankeny students to show their love for
their former classmate. Following the ceremony, a few students got on
their twitter accounts and simply tweeted #diamondslastforever. It
didn’t take long before these tweets became viral. Anyone and everyone
with a Twitter account in Ankeny jumped on the bandwagon to support this
cause, and also took the opportunity to support their classmate Joe
Tourte as well by tweeting #heartforjoe. Not long after the tweets
spread throughout Ankeny, tweets were spreading at an insane rate all
throughout Iowa. People of all towns, even students from rival high
schools Southeast Polk and Valley, showed their support for Ott and
Tourte.
With
the whole state of Iowa coming together to support, Ankeny students had
another goal they wanted to reach, get these topics trending on
Twitter. To become a trending topic on Twitter, the topic must be
tweeted so many times within an hour. The odds that a town in Iowa could
get a topic trending on Twitter definitely were not very promising, but
still, no one gave up. Students and other people in the community
tweeted their favorite celebrities explaining Dyamond’s story and asked
them to help get #diamondslastforever as a trending topic. Luckily,
people including Tyler Sash, Adrian Clayborne, Michael Vick, and Chelsea
Handler jumped in to help the people of Ankeny get the topic trending.
Shortly
after midnight on December 15, the students of Ankeny reached their
goal, #diamondslastforever became a trending topic not only in Iowa, but
in the entire country. Within a matter of hours, Dyamond Ott’s story
reached out to an entire nation. The tweets weren’t about to slow down
either. Up until about 3 a.m. on December 15, tweets were being posted
every couple of seconds with #diamondslastforever and #heartforjoe. With
so many people in the community supporting them, Dyamond Ott and Joe
Tourte have made an everlasting impact on Ankeny.