Batkid in San Francisco

Correspondent (North America)

SAN FRANCISCO — Last week residents of San Francisco, California were left in despair as they feared their city had been overrun by criminals such as ‘The Riddler’ and ‘Penguin’, but thankfully none other than Batkid himself was on hand to save the city and protect it from the villains.

It sounds almost like a plot of a Hollywood movie and indeed it was a completely staged event, all in the aid of the Make a Wish Foundation, who wanted to recreate Gotham City from the famous Batman films, and make one little boys dream day come true.

Miles Scott a.k.a Batkid, who is just five years old and is recovering from leukaemia, had always dreamed of becoming Batkid for the day, and thanks to Make a Wish Foundation and the help of many volunteers, his dream came true.

Make a Wish Foundation is a charity that works alongside children with life threatening illnesses and their families, to help make their wishes come true, however turning San Francisco into Gotham City for the day definitely turned into a big challenge for the charity. When the foundation heard of Miles’ wish, they reached out on social media for people to help recreate Gotham, play villains and form a crowd as part of the event and the response was overwhelming.

Miles was accompanied by Batman himself, as they travelled across the city for the day in a Batmobile-esque car, rushing to stop a bank robbery and to save a damsel in distress, as hundreds of people stood and cheered him on. President Obama even recorded a short video supporting Miles saying, “Way to go Miles! Way to save Gotham!” and hundreds followed Batkids journey around Gotham via Twitter.

One of the big supporters of the event was The San Francisco Chronicle, who on the day, ran the headline “Batkid Saves the Day” with the newspaper changing its name to The Gotham Chronicle for this special day, one that I have no doubt Miles will not forget!

Image Courtesy: By Jeremy Thompson from United States of America [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons; Mike Myers | Flickr