Help! ‘Boy’ Doesn’t Need Any!

Attention, Orange County and the world:

Craig Shergold is not 9 years old. He is not dying. Nor is he faced with an inoperable brain tumor. He does not have a final wish that he wants granted. Nor is he trying to set a world record for the number of greeting cards received.

Accordingly, you can stop writing to him. Actually, you could have stopped in 1990 when the number of get-well cards hit 16.25 million, but you didn’t. You kept sending and sending until, by the latest count, you’ve sent about 100 million cards since 1989.

Thanks to the wonders (and perils) of mass communication and the Internet, what began as a touching gesture to grant a boy’s dying wish a decade ago has become a worldwide misunderstanding.

Nowadays, two national organizations that specialize in granting last requests to critically ill or dying youngsters continue to be inundated with cards for Shergold, now 19 and living outside London in good health. That’s because the senders apparently believe Shergold is a youngster in the throes of apparently terminal cancer, which he was 10 years ago.

The Orange County office of the Make-A-Wish Foundation is in the midst of a renewed barrage of phone calls about Shergold, apparently the result of a chain letter gone berserk.

For whatever reasons, at least one of the Shergold-related correspondences mutated years ago into a chain letter asking that readers send business cards to the Shergold family. Over the years, the letter or a variation of it has surfaced from time to time.

“We haven’t had it [the attention] around for a while,” says Terri Thomas of the Orange County Make-A-Wish office. “It’s been quiet for six months, but now we’re getting four to five calls a day.” That’s been going on for the last month, she says, placing the number of queries at well over 100.

Same story at national headquarters in Phoenix. “It’s a chain letter that’s taken on a life of its own,” Make-A-Wish spokesman Paul Allvin says. “It started in 1990, and we’ve been dealing with it off and on since 1990. We still get about 100 calls a week, just in the national office.”

Adding to Make-A-Wish’s vexation is that Shergold wasn’t its client. The Atlanta-based Children’s Wish Foundation handled the original request in 1989 when Shergold was, indeed, believed to be dying of a brain tumor.

“The doctors in England told his mother, ‘Take him home, let him die in peace, keep him as comfortable as possible,’ ” says Children’s Wish spokeswoman Christy Andrews.

As get-well wishes mounted, Shergold’s family contacted the foundation. Rather than wanting to meet a celebrity or go to a famous place, Shergold’s “dying” wish was that he make the Guinness book as the person receiving the most get-well greeting cards. The catchy idea made news, and cards poured in from around the world.

With an eye toward the 1991 Guinness edition,

Andrews says, the cutoff date was set for May 1990. By then, Shergold had received the 16.25 million cards. When the figure hit 33 million a year later, Guinness gave Craig the record in 1992 and retired the category.

By then, however, American media executive John Kluge intervened and arranged for Shergold to have an operation in the United States. In 1991, Shergold’s tumor was removed and his prospects improved.

Killing reports of Craig’s imminent demise have proved tougher than eradicating his tumor.

“It’s part of our life here at Make-a-Wish,” Allvin says. “We just know that every day we’re going to get 30 to 50 Shergold calls. We have an 800 number set up so people can hear the whole story.”

Meanwhile, over at Children’s Wish, Andrews says all the cards are sent to a warehouse, from which they get recycled. Currently, she says, about 10 mail tubs full of cards await the recycler’s bin. Volunteers still come in three or four times a week to handle Shergold mail.

As for young Shergold, Andrews says he continues to live with his parents and attend school. He shows only minor effects, such as slightly impaired speech, from the tumor. Even though the original wish created a monster, the Shergold family genuinely believes, Andrews says, that the global outpouring aided Craig during his most precarious times.

The two foundations fear the Shergold story may never end. “With the Internet being a household tool,” Allvin says, “once you get on, you can forward it [the bogus letter] to hundreds and thousands of people just on a lazy afternoon. It has circled the globe many times. . . . We can’t keep up with it.”

Jokingly, I ask Allvin if the foundation was holding all this against Shergold.

“We love Craig. We just hate the phenomenon,” he says, laughing. Andrews says it’s touching that so many millions of people care. “The reason it’s been perpetuated is that people genuinely want to do something nice for children,” she says.

One correction. I mentioned above that Shergold doesn’t have a final wish. Actually, he does.

“Because we only do one wish for each child,” Andrews says, “Craig laughs and says if he could wish for something else, he would wish for this to stop.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at [email protected].