Cape officer shaves head as gesture to 8-year-old cancer patient

An 8-year-old cancer patient in Lee County is in remission after undergoing extensive chemotherapy. Now, since fighting cancer is difficult and soul crushing for adults, let alone children, the student resource officer at her school in Cape Coral decided to show her some extra support.

Amalia Mikulanec, a fourth-grader student at Skyline Elementary School, has been battling cancer most of her life. Her story is one filled with hospital visits and chemo treatment. She has shown courage and bravery that most children don’t have to at her age.

Doctors diagnosed Mikulanec with leukemia when she was just two and a half years old. The disease returned in 2016, so she continued to undergo treatment to beat the disease.

It came to a point this summer, after her final relapse, that they didn’t really know what direction to go with because the treatment wasn’t working for her.

But, last week after months away and in the hospital, Amalia finally came back to school. Doctors told Amalia she is in remission. She turns 9 years old this week and wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up.

And that’s also where Cape Coral officer Andrew Miller comes in.

“I’m the school resource officer at Skyline Elementary,” Miller said.

Miller only met Amalia maybe one time at school, he said. But when he heard she was coming back, he decided to shave off all his hair.

“She had lost her hair from the treatment, so I just kind of decided to cheer her up,” Miller said.

There are 1,100 students at Skyline.

“And not all of them may look up to me, but some of them do,” Miller said. “And just to show them that we need to support her, and we don’t know what people are going through.”

If you ask Miller, he will say he never wanted the spotlight. To him, it was a simple, humbling gesture to support an 8-year-old and make a friend for life.