HEROESAMONG US
Special Dolls
for Special Kids
A WISCONSIN MOM MAKES MINI-ME TOYS AS
UNIQUE AS THE CHILDREN WHO CUDDLE THEM
A
s a social worker using play thera-
py in the late 1990s to help children
through their cancer treatments,
Amy Jandrisevits wished she
could comfort her patients with
dolls that bore their all-too-familiar hair loss and
surgery scars. “I would scavenge Goodwill for bald
Cabbage Patch Kids because that was the closest
thing I could find,” she says. “I thought, these kids
need something that looks like they do.” The idea
stuck with Jandrisevits after she left social work in
2001 to start a family. Then in 2015 a mom whose
daughter lost a leg to amputation asked Jandri-
sevits, handy with a sewing machine, if she could
craft a mini-me doll for the girl. After Jandrisevits
posted a photo of the legless doll on Facebook, or-
ders poured in for likenesses with everything from
albinism to birthmarks. “Differences make kids
feel isolated and judged,” she says. “With the doll,
a child sees, ‘I am not the only one who looks this
way... and beautiful enough to be a doll.’ ”
Jandrisevits, 46, has since crafted nearly 400
custom dolls at her New Berlin, Wis., dining-room
table, with donors often covering the $100 cost
through Jandrisevits’s nonprofit A Doll Like Me.
The mom of three insists on making each doll
herself with help from her mother and a friend.
For Keagan Cameron, 2, whose rare skin condition
has him covered in birthmarks, Jandrisevits
matched the doll’s spots exactly. “That was the most
amazing thing,” says Keagan’s mom, Joy. Brian
Grassi of Coventry, R.I., says he “wept like a baby”
when a doll came in
the mail for his daugh-
ter Emma, born three
months later in Octo-
ber without her lower
left arm. “Seeing my
daughter with her
doll, it makes me think
about her future—not
her limitations.”
—DIANE HERBST
PEOPLE September 2, 2019 65
Zachariah
Hayes, 6,
was born
with a rare
genetic
disorder.
Jandrisevits (with
daughter Kalea)
calls the dolls “a
labor of love.”
Best
Buddies
Keagan takes
his doll “Chip”
(“When kids
ask, I say he
has chocolate-
chip syndrome
from eating
too many,”
explains his
mom, Joy)
everywhere.
Maeve, 7,
and Mairéad,
5, Contant
(right) have
albinism—
just like
their dolls.
‘The
doll has
given me
confidence
that Keagan
will know
it’s okay
to be
different”
—JOY CAMERON,
KEAGAN’S MOM
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