Thursday, October 1, 2026
When Access Elevator owner Dave Russo decided to team up with Oktane Media Ventures to allocate some of his company’s advertising dollars to create a webseries to showcase the stories of inspiring, everyday people, he anticipated he would meet some pretty remarkable men and women, and hear incredibly moving stories. “Elevated” has indeed allowed him to celebrate the everyday heroes he meets through his business, but it’s the most recent episode that hit very close to home.
The new episode, “Meet Kendall,” which premiered on July 20, shares the struggles of Wilson Elementary School student Kendall Curnuck in her battle with leukemia. Eight-year-old Kendall and her family have been fighting the disease diligently since January 2010, when, in one quick phone call, they discovered that Kendall’s agonizing “growing pains” and frequent nosebleeds were actually symptoms of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Remembering that phone call, Kendall’s mother Lisa said, “Hearing that…your whole life stops and then it just restarts but it’s a new different life that you would never wish on your worst enemy. “
It’s never easy to hear about anyone facing a serious illness, especially a child, but as a friend of the Curnuck family for years, Russo knew that shooting this episode would be particularly challenging. “I knew that this would be an emotional one, but sitting there on the couch with Kyle and Lisa, talking to them parent-to-parent, it was rough. Talking to this family that lives around the block from you, whose daughter is in your own daughter’s class, but is living such an unimaginably different life … it hits you hard. “
Woven into their trials and tribulations are pockets of goodness. There are a number of wonderful organizations that make life a little sweeter for the Curnucks and other families facing similar situations. Perhaps the sweetest of all was The Make-a-Wish Foundation, which sent the family on a trip to Hawaii so that Kendall could get a surfing lesson from her idol, Bethany Hamilton.
