Dressed in a fuzzy chicken costume, a then-2-year-old girl — accompanied by her parents dressed as farmers — walked around their new neighborhood ringing doorbells and asking for candy. It was July. 

That is how the Westbrook community first met and fell in love with Lucy Hanson five years ago.

Everyone in Lucy’s neighborhood is close, Sue Salisbury, her neighbor, said, but it’s particularly hard not to love Lucy. She trick-or-treats year round. She jumps into her neighbors’ piles of leaves as they’re raking. She rides around the neighborhood on a seat on her dad’s bike with a speaker playing music attached in the back. 

“She’s got the whole neighborhood wrapped around her finger,” Joe Salisbury, Sue’s husband, said. 

So when Lucy was diagnosed with cancer at the end of October, the neighborhood decided to flood her with love as she spends the next nine months, holidays included, in the hospital for chemotherapy treatment.

Friends, neighbors, strangers and even people from other countries have sent Lucy a deluge of holiday cards, donations, gifts and meals. 

Lucy’s aunt, Juna Ferguson, shared Lucy’s story on social media and asked for donations and meals to help. She also submitted Lucy’s name to The Angel Card Project, an online charity that requests greeting cards for people in need, so Lucy would feel as much love as possible during the holiday season. 

In just a few weeks, Lucy has received hundreds and hundreds of cards, letters and packages, including some from as far as Germany and Australia. On Meal Train — a website that facilitates meal giving to families in hard times — people have donated almost $22,000 for the Hanson family and sent dozens of meals. Lucy’s wish list sold out within five minutes — three separate times. 

The Hanson family

In many ways, Lucy is just like any other 7-year-old girl from Westbrook. 

She loves Harry Potter (she’s in Gryffindor, of course). She’s reading “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix,” but it’s a little scary for her. She just became a Brownie in the Girl Scouts. She wants to be a music teacher when she grows up. She loves to draw and sing and dance and do gymnastics and musical theatre. She has a best friend named Mallory who she has known since she was 6 months old. She’ll cry if there’s a snow day and she can’t go to school and see Mallory. 

She’s witty and kind and bubbly and fun. 

But in other ways, Lucy’s life doesn’t resemble that of other kids. 

Last month, she spent more time in the hospital than at home. If she’s in the hospital, she has a robot she can drive around school to participate in her classes. (She dressed up the robot with a jacket, a hat and a sparkly backpack to make it look more like her). 

Lucy is much smaller than most girls her age, as a genetic condition slows her growth. And she knows a lot more about cancer than most children.

She’s used to doctors and nurses and hospitals. 

A few months after she was born in July 2018, she developed a rash on her face, which eventually spread to other parts of her body. After visiting three dermatologists and ruling out eczema, Lucy ultimately was diagnosed with Rothmund-Thomson syndrome type 2, a rare genetic condition that primarily affects her skin and bones and increases her chances of developing several types of cancer. Lucy is one of about 500 documented cases of RTS in the world.

For six years, Lucy was healthy. But in October, while she was attending a conference for families affected by RTS in Salt Lake City, she started to limp. She seemed to get better after a while, but a week and a half later, she couldn’t put any weight on her foot. 

That’s when she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in her right tibia. The doctors said Lucy will need nine months of chemotherapy and a below-the-knee amputation in February of 2026. 

“How will we navigate the rest of Lucy’s life?” Staci Hanson, Lucy’s mom, thought.

Even though their lives had flipped upside down, Staci and her husband Jason decided to live as normally as possible. 

They make sure Lucy does school work and takes walks. A school teacher checks in with her at the hospital and a child life specialist comes to play with her. Last week, they made slime together. 

The nurses and doctors at MaineHealth Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, where Lucy is receiving her chemotherapy treatments, have made magic in a very nonmagical situation, Staci said. In the hospital, Lucy got to pick out her own Christmas tree and ornaments for her room and even made a gingerbread house. 

In the past month, the Hansons have spent just five days at home. Staci and Jason take shifts at the hospital. One night, mom stays with Lucy, the next it’s dad. They only live 15 minutes from the hospital, so it’s not a long drive to come home to get new things or do laundry, Jason said. 

“It feels like a long time,” Lucy protested. 

Her parents are honest with her about RTS, osteosarcoma and her approaching amputation in February. 

“We try to lift her up and tell her, ‘Yeah, your world is going to look a little bit different, but you can still live a super normal life even with a prosthetic,’” Staci said. “So we’ve shown her lots of videos of people doing gymnastics and dance and just living fulfilling lives even though they have a prosthetic.”

Rallying around

Since Lucy met Joe and Sue Salisbury while trick-or-treating in the summer years ago, she has become part of their family. 

“It’s like having a grandchild,” Joe said. 

Lucy will often randomly call the Salisburys to invite them over for a movie night. No matter what they’re doing, even if they’re in the middle of dinner, they always accept. 

“You don’t say no to her,” Sue said. 

So they will stop what they’re doing, walk across the road in their slippers, and cuddle up with Lucy on the couch to watch whatever movie she wants. 

Now, Sue and Joe hold on to those memories of her until they can resume that tradition.

In the meantime, the community is doing everything it can to help the family. The less the Hansons have to worry about, the more they can focus on Lucy and themselves. 

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