Last weekend, Max Hinton and his family traveled to Huron, Ohio, where Max pushed a button and made a building implode. "I watch Mythbusters and they blow up stuff a lot. And I learned to like blowing up stuff a lot and I wished to blow something up," said Hinton.
At the age of five, Max was diagnosed with nueroblastoma, a rare cancer that doctors treated aggressively with six rounds of chemo, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant. Shortly after his diagnosis, his family learned he would have a wish granted through the Make a Wish foundation. Max's dad said the news was initially devastating. "You realize your child is sick enough that there is a possibility of things not going the way you want them to. But then it turned out to be something to distract him, to look forward to, to talk about what he wanted to do. And it turned out to be a good thing for him to look forward to," said Max's father, Samuel Hinton.
In Ohio, Max helped a team of professionals from Advanced Explosives Demolition bring down an old mill building by packing dynamite and placing explosives in pre-drilled holes. Then, he pushed a button and the building came crashing down. "It took about 15 seconds for the whole thing to come down," said Hinton.
Max is now in remission and his parents said his last two scans have been fantastic, showing no sign of cancer.
The Central Valley's Make a Wish organization has now granted more than 1,600 wishes in the last 26 years. They said Max's wish was the first of its kind.
