Checotah Students Donate Field Trip Money To Family Battling Cancer

An Oklahoma father battling stage-four colon cancer is getting help from an unexpected group of people.

After a 10-month fight, Jesse Daniels thought he finally beat colon cancer; but at 28 years old, he’s once again in the fight of his life.

"We left here with that kind of feeling that everything was gonna be good," Jesse said. "Then I got a phone call a week later that said that this last biopsy that nobody was worried about came back."

“It wasn’t what we wanted to hear,” said Jesse’s wife, Kristin.

The couple received the devastating news as Kristin was six months pregnant with their first child.

Kristin is a second-grade teacher in Checotah, and news of her husband's cancer diagnosis traveled fast through the small town.

"I received an email from our superintendent, notifying all the teachers in the district," said sixth-grade teacher Carrie Presley.

Presley said the email came the same day her class finished raising their field trip; they quickly realized the money could be better spent.

"I felt like if I presented it to them objectively, and let them decide, then it would be in their hands," Presley said.

The students voted to donate every penny of their field trip money to the Daniels family.

"If I was in that situation I would want somebody to help me," sixth grader Paxon Presley said.

Carrie Presley said, "We saw students just pulling out their money, and they had fives, or change, and just dumping it into buckets."

The students raised more than $2,000 in 48 hours.

Kristin said, "I couldn't imagine that a classroom full of sixth graders that didn't even know me - I've never even met these kids, and, you know, they have never met him - would give up that money and their field trip to be just so kind. I was very overwhelmed."

A Checotah boutique ended up paying for the kids to have their field trip.

The Daniels family still needs help, and if you’d like to donate, you can do so here.