Talk about a lucky break…
“STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Talk about a summer bummer.
Mike O’Rourke, 7, of Huguenot, was so excited about his last day of second grade at PS 36, that he ran out of the building to his mother, who was waiting in the schoolyard.
A little too excited, he tripped and fell, breaking his wrist.
The break required O’Rourke to wear a full-length cast for two to three weeks –- a “summer nightmare” as he called it.
Thankfully, his father Michael, and the employees of Ink Couture in Pleasant Plains, came up with an unusual, creative solution.
Michael had the idea to take his very unhappy son to the tattoo shop to see if they could help him turn a plain, dull cast into a work of art.
“I had the idea during a baseball game,” Michael said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”
A FIRST FOR INK COUTURE
Michael Russo, manager of Ink Couture, said this is the first time anybody at the shop has decorated a cast, but they were more than willing to help out the little boy.
“The shop was very excited to do something different,” Russo said.
Ink Couture artist Drew spoke with the O’Rourkes and learned that the boy was an passionate Iron Man fan, and decided to use that as a theme for his cast.
Drew then took two hours out of his day at the shop and designed the perfect robotic arm — what his father calls a “masterpiece” — that transformed Mike’s cast.
“Drew went above and beyond to make my son feel like a superhero. [He’s] had a smile from ear-to-ear and hasn’t stopped smiling since,” O’Rourke said.
“We were in McDonald’s and the Lego store in the mall and people stopped him and said ‘you’re the Facebook kid,’ referring to the tattoo shop’s social media post about the cast, O’Rourke said.
“He loves the attention,” that dad said. “Everyone is in amazement at the work that was done.”
And while they’ve never done it before, Russo said that they would be “more than willing” to help out anybody facing a similar problem.
Now Mike’s “summer nightmare” has been replaced by a cool robotic arm that’s the talk of the town. “
Source: Siive.com