Girl's Bracelets Help Foundation That Helped Her

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Families with loved ones battling serious illnesses face significant financial burdens in addition to emotional pain.

That's why 12-year-old Taylor Breimhorst, of Shakopee, makes and sells hundreds of bracelets from her home to help families in need.

Breimhorst showed WCCO how she makes hundreds of rainbow loom bracelets and sells them, usually at prices between $1 and $3.

"We have made some special bracelets for professional and high school sports teams," her mother, Denielle Breimhorst, said.

"I remember it hurt, and my mom would say it's going to be okay," Taylor Breimhorst said.

In 2009, doctors removed a benign brain tumor from Taylor's head, along with her pituitary gland.

Taylor still needed radiation treatments, which forced her and her mother to move to Florida for several months and leave the rest of their family behind.

"Pinky Swear Foundation helped us with the mortgage, so we could afford both places," Denielle Breimhorst said.

The foundation was founded by a Minnesota family that lost a child to a brain tumor.

The foundation helps provide financial and emotional support to families of loved ones battling cancer.

"Taylor's tumor was not cancerous, it was benign," Denielle Breimhorst said. "The only difference is benign tumors stay in one place and cancer spreads," she said.

Denielle Breimhorst said the foundation helped lift a financial burden that kept the family from having to deplete savings and dip into retirement funds.

"It is amazing help when you are just wondering how you are going to make everything work," she said.

She said her daughter still has to take daily medication and get yearly checkups to combat the after-effects of the brain tumor.

The 12-year-old plans to keep making the bracelets and giving the profits to the foundation that helped her family when it was needed.

"I want other people to know they can get through it like I did and they can be brave about it," Taylor Breimhorst said.

On Saturday, Taylor and her family are hosting a pancake breakfast and silent auction at Applebee's in Bloomington from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.