When most of her peers see her in the hallway, they see the freshman who made the varsity basketball and junior varsity volleyball teams, who gets good grades, and who has tons of friends, but what most kids don’t realize about Phoebe F. is that she is also the 14-yearold survivor of a brain tumor that almost took her life.

On December 19th, 1996, the then-two-and-a-half year old Phoebe was admitted into Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital and was treated for a life threatening brain tumor that her doctors thought she wouldn’t even recover from.

Phoebe was transferred to Yale from a nearby hospital after her doctors realized the severity of her condition. Phoebe’s parents, Daniel and Jessica F., were told their daughter would have to relearn to walk and talk and that she would probably have to spend several months in the hospital.

“It all happened so fast. One minute we’re making Christmas plans and the next they’re telling us our daughter could die,” said Jessica F.

Luckily, the surgery was successful and Phoebe exceeded the surgeon’s expectations. The nurses nicknamed her “Phenom” because of her unprecedented recovery.

“They said I wouldn’t walk or talk for a year,” said Phoebe. “But I was like yelling at them and jumping around on my way out of surgery.”

Before she left Yale, Phoebe had time for one more miracle. She saw a boy on her floor with no toys and, realizing it was Christmas Eve, she decided to give him her Barney doll.

“He didn’t have anything,” Phoebe said “Just five visitors and no toys.”

That one gift was the beginning of Phoebe’s Phenomenal Toy Drive. Every year, local businesses volunteer to be drop-off points for the drive. In years past, the Milford Police Department has helped. This year, however, they have their own cause - one of the officer’s daughters recently passed away, so they are promoting that cause.

This year, Phoebe is looking forward to taking a more active role in the toy drive. She is organizing a “pack-it” cruiser event, where people can come stuff a police cruiser with toys for children in need.

“I’m in high school now,” Phoebe said. “I’m supposed to take more responsibility in running this but I like it.”

Phoebe’s cancer hasn’t returned to date and she is enjoying an active life. She said she has to go for yearly brain scans to make sure the space left in her brain when the tumor was taken out fills with normal brain tissue or fluid.

This summer, Phoebe continued her aspiring acting career. She spent several weeks away from home shooting “The Green Monster,” an independent horror film in which she plays a character named Amanda Radford. Phoebe also recently started modeling and is looking forward to where that might take her.

She hasn’t let the attention of the toy drive or her other talents go to her head, and is really just your average girl with her own problems and teenage issues.

“High School? It wasn’t as scary as I thought,” Phoebe said. “But I did get lost for the first two weeks.”

(Some information courtesy phoebe’stoydrive.com)