David Vigil, a master leathersmith, is well known for his replicas of props appearing in the Uncharted series (and other games made by Naughty Dog.) The 25-year-old craftsman is also fighting stage 2 pancreatic cancer, and trying to raise money to pay for his treatment.
Vigil’s second fund raiser (he held one last year) is in a bad spot right now. With a day to go he is well short of a $US47,000 goal — having raised about $US9,000. That said, reaching the goal is not required for Vigil to collect whatever has been donated so far.
He’s turned to crowdsourced fundraising because he lacks the insurance that would cover his treatment. A campaign last year raised $US26,464 for him.
Why a second round? What was stomach cancer last year has spread to his pancreas this year. It’s stage two. “The severity of his cancer has made obtaining the funds in the time he needs seem impossible,” writes a supporter on his fundraiser site.
In addition to crafting Nathan Drake’s holster from Uncharted, Vigil also made Joel and Ellie’s backpack from The Last of Us. Both are for sale (at a premium.) The stuff he makes can be seen here; it’s not branded with the games’ name for obvious issues of licensing, but the items should be instantly recognisable. Of course, buying anything off of that would help him out, too.
The Fight Begins! Help one of our own! [GoFundMe.com]
To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.
Comments
11 responses to “Uncharted Craftsman Seeks More Help In Battle Against Cancer”
Not to distract from this guy’s battle, and I do feel for him (my father died of cancer) and I hope he gets the money he needs. But it never fails to stun me how Americans can’t go to hospital (or a GP) without insurance.
I have one dead friend, who died shortly after his 18th birthday because he began having seizures and his mum had no insurance. I knew another lady who was refused entry to a hospital during a heart attack because of no insurance. And I know a family who has spent years paying off a crippling debt for the time they took their 2 year old daughter to the emergency ward for a spider bite. A week long stay in the hospital and they’ll be paying that off for years and years.
So lucky to live in Australia.
It’s pretty bad, isn’t it? Decent healthcare should be something everyone has access to, and one would expect it in a first world country like America. But… Anyway, we are very lucky here. While the public healthcare system could be better, at least we don’t have to worry about insurance or being denied treatment. I’m happy for my taxes to go towards Medicare if it means people can get proper healthcare when they need it rather than having to suffer or worry.
Also, good luck to this guy. I hope he gets enough funding to help him.
Yeah, it’s sad that if you don’t have insurance and your kid is sick you have to decide if it’s serious enough to go to the hospital, but you never really know. I suppose google helps.
I have plenty of friends in the south, red neck types, good honest hard workin, god-fearing friends who believe healthcare is a form of communism.
I’ve heard some Americans compare it to communism, but I’ve just never understood their argument against decent healthcare for everyone.
What I find staggering is the amount they spend on their military, which nobody seems to dare utter a word against, compared to how much they spend on health care. I just don’t understand how you can be willing to spend that much on killing other nations’ citizens but not be willing to spend even a small fraction of that on healing your own.
Well, if the LNP stay in power much longer this won’t be the case. Our very own Tea Party would tear our ‘socialist’ system down in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it.
They already tried it once…
…Medibank Public/Private anyone?
It is relatively inexpensive to provide Medicare for a population of 22 million.
Even so people admit it is unsustainable in it’s current form.
Try providing free, or heavily subsidised, medical services for 313 million people.
That is a lot less wars America could afford to fight.
It’s also difficult when you’ve got such an insane socio-economic disparity between rich and poor in a country.
I know we aren’t perfect here by any means, but we have a much more even distribution of wealth than in the US. Makes the taxes to pay for Medicare more evenly distributed, so you don’t have an entire section of society feeling like they are subsidising an entire other section of societies health care.
But ultimately, yes, wars are expensive. Maintaining the military industrial complex on the scale which the US does is expensive.
It was just the other day I thought about David’s campaign from last year and wondered how he was doing. I’m really deeply saddened by his situation, and I hope he manages to pull through and obtain the support he needs.
My in-laws are currently over from the US, and they keep trying to make comparisons between AU and US and ask why we choose to live here…… this situation demonstrates an argument which quite simply trumps all others.
Donated a $50, his leatherwork is truly amazing and I really, honestly hope that he’s able to keep producing all that amazing stuff for years to come.