A St. George mother's plea for a new shirt for her daughter with autism goes viral (Photo: Deborah Grimshaw Skouson) 
 
 (KUTV) In case you need a reminder how powerful social media can be, here it is. 
 
 Deborah Skouson of St. George needed to find a shirt for her 10-year-old daughter. But not just any shirt. 
 
 It had to be a pink shirt with flowers and hearts -- and it had to be a specific brand and style. 
 
 Her daughter Cami, who is autistic, has been “fixated” on her favorite shirt for the past five years. But, according to Skouson, the shirt had recently become unwearable, and they couldn’t find any place that was selling a new one – including eBay. 
 
 So, Aug. 7, Skouson posted a plea on Facebook asking her social media friends for help. 
 
 “We need another ‘pink flower shirt’, so will you please share this post or even just the photo?” Skouson wrote. “We will pay for the shirt and the shipping if someone would be kind enough to sell it to us. It has to be this exact shirt! We've tried similar shirts, and they don't cut it with Cami!” 
 
 
 
 Within a week, the post had been shared thousands of times. As of Tuesday afternoon, Skouson said, she had either received or been promised 135 shirts – all the exact kind her daughter wanted. 
 
 “It’s been very, very touching,” Skouson told 2News. “I am overwhelmed by people’s connection to this story.” 
 
 Cami is the second of five children. Her mother said Cami likes things to stay the same, which is why giving up her beloved shirt was so difficult. 
 
 Now, thanks to a Facebook post, things are much better. 
 
 “It’s ballooned way bigger than I ever imagined,” Skouson said. ||||| On August 7, Deborah Skouson was desperate. Her daughter Cami, who has autism, loves to wear just one shirt—a pink flowered top from Target. But the shirt had become faded and unwearable. Skouson was able to find a few duplicates on eBay, but she needed more, so she turned to Facebook. 
 
 She posted a request for anyone with a shirt like the one in the picture to sell it to her. She even offered to pay for shipping. 
 
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 The request quickly went viral with over 22,000 shares overall, including one from a local TV news anchor and the Love What Really Matters page, which has over 4 million fans. 
 
 Skouson told the Daily Dot via email that she has since received over 150 shirts. "We were hoping for 4–5 shirts to use as backups so we wouldn't have to keep washing and mending the same shirt over and over," she said. "At first, my daughter was a little confused to see more than one of her 'pink flower shirts.' I explained to her that people gave them to her because they loved her." 
 
 Skouson said the shirts have come from as far away as Germany and England. She said one mother in the Philippines tried to mail her a shirt, but her post office would only send paper mail internationally. "She was very apologetic, and I assured her that her efforts meant so much more to us than the shirt," Skouson wrote. 
 
 Cami who just turned 10, started the fifth grade on August 11. Skouson says that even though they have more shirts than they need, the offers keep coming and Target also contacted her, wanting to make larger versions of the shirt to fit Cami into adulthood. 
 
 "I accepted their offer with tears streaming down my face," Skouson said. "The kindness being shown my little girl has been so beautiful." 
 
 Skouson wrote that the support she has received has changed how she sees the internet, and she now feels more connected to people. Yet, even in the midst of all the love, Skouson noted that there has been some criticism. 
 
 "There have been a few [people] stating that I shouldn't feed into my daughter's 'obsession,' and that I am setting her up for failure. I understand their point of view, but I'm her mother, and I know what is best for her. If the shirt makes her happy, I'm going to do everything in my power to find it for her." ||||| Five years ago, Seattle poet Heather McHugh got some unexpected news: She had been awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” of $500,000. 
 
 For the next two years, she tried to figure out what to do with the money. The grant comes with no strings attached, but McHugh says she didn’t want to spend it on herself. 
 
 “Nobody deserves that kind of money, and I think something in me was chastened by being awarded such a big amount of money,” she said. 
 
 Then, her godson and his wife had a baby with severe disabilities, and McHugh says she kept thinking about how stressful that would be for them raising a daughter who would never walk, talk or be able to feed herself. 
 
 “It was obvious to me when that baby was born that in 10 years, they were going to need a break,” she said. 
 
 So McHugh took the money she received and used it to start a nonprofit called Caregifted, awarding vacations to people who have spent a decade or more taking care of a family member full-time. 
 
 The Challenges Of Caregiving Full-Time 
 
 One of the recipients is Tricia Elsner, a single mom of triplet 17-year-old sons living in Federal Way. 
 
 Outside the house she shares with her sister Kathy there’s a sign propped up that reads: “Autism Awareness. 1 in 50 children. Let’s find some answers.” 
 
 Elsner says she’s not sure that statistic is accurate, but one thing is clear: for her, it’s not one out of 50 kids, it’s two out of three. Her son Colin doesn’t have autism, but both Conner and Ian do. 
 
 Ian is not able to talk much. Conner can talk, but still has a hard time expressing himself. 
 
 Every 20 minutes or so, the boys roll in from school, or in Conner’s case, a job training program, shrug off their backpacks and head for their rooms. 
 
 “Did you have a good day?” Elsner asked Ian on a recent afternoon. 
 
 He answered with one word: “Help.” 
 
 He wants help getting out of a special harness he wears that attaches inside the bus because he won’t wear a seat belt. Elsner unzips it and Ian retreats to his room to watch "A Muppet Family Christmas" on his tablet. 
 
 He curls up on the bed, and Elsner leans over him, speaking slowly. 
 
 “Mom cleaned your room really well, okay? So no peeing on the floor and keep your clothes on, okay?” she said. 
 
 She explains that even though he knows how to use the toilet, he sometimes just doesn’t feel like it and urinates on the floor. 
 
 The Tantrums Of Almost-Grown Men Who Can't Communicate 
 
 Most parents are able to get through toddler temper tantrums and toilet training because there’s an end in sight. For Elsner, there hasn’t been an end. 
 
 And now, the tantrums she faces come from almost-grown men — her sons who can’t communicate what’s bothering them. 
 
 Conner mostly doesn’t want to be around Ian, but that’s unpredictable. Sometimes he’s fine with his brother. 
 
 “He’ll go over and say, 'Hug Ian, Kiss Ian!’ and hug Ian and give him a kiss and then go back to his room,” Elsner said. “And other times he comes in and says, 'Oh no, Ian’s home, no Ian! Ian leave the house.’ And I’m like, 'He’s fine. There’s nothing to be upset about.’ But he can’t tell us what the issue is.” 
 
 She and her sister do what they can to keep the peace, but things can spiral out of control. The knives are kept locked away in a cupboard. She only ever uses the back two burners of the stove. 
 
 “Kathy and I have both have been knocked to the ground,” she said. “Conner has kicked me across the room before, slams his head into my head. Ian mainly hurts himself.” 
 
 There’s a team of people who come and help, but when they’re there, Elsner has to use the time to do things like clean pee off the floor. On a good day, she’s able to squeeze in a nap or do some coursework toward a bachelor’s degree in teaching. 
 
 She’s exactly the kind of person poet McHugh set out to help. 
 
 'They Ask For The Simplest Things On Vacation' 
 
 “I can see how hard some lives are and how much they deserve tribute,” McHugh said. “They do it for their families, they do it out of love, but what they do benefits everybody and nobody’s thinking about it. Nobody’s waving thank you at them.” 
 
 So McHugh used the MacArthur grant money to give caregivers week-long getaways in Victoria, B.C., Maine and Napa Valley. She accompanies many of them and acts as a concierge, fulfilling their needs, playing tour guide and offering a listening ear. 
 
 “They ask for the simplest things on vacation,” she said. “They want to go for a walk when they want to. They want to read a book.” 
 
 McHugh is 66 with short-cropped hair and a bubbly manner. She talks with as much enthusiasm about her new espresso maker as she does about German philosophers. 
 
 And she’s trying to connect her background in the arts to her new calling heading a nonprofit. (She’s still bemused by that role. “I find it really hard to endure the word 'scalability,’” she confided. “There’s a whole lot of nonprofit language I had never heard before.”) 
 
 She’s wrangled some big-name writers (poet Billy Collins, novelist Rebecca Wells and many others) to donate their time to read aspiring authors’ manuscripts. The one-day fundraiser will be held on Nov. 25. 
 
 And this work has inspired her own poetry. She’s written a poem called “Caregivens” in which she drew from the unique vocabulary the caregivers use in their application essays. 
 
 A Respite To Clear Away 'A Feeling In My Chest Like A Big Stone' 
 
 So far, Caregifted has awarded getaways to almost 30 caregivers. Tricia Elsner went to the fishing village of Eastport, Maine last year for her trip away. 
 
 She did some whale watching and kayaking, had a massage and made herself a smoothie every morning to enjoy on her deck overlooking the harbor. In the evening, she watched the Food Network to her heart’s content. 
 
 It was the first time in many, many years that I only had to worry about myself. 
 
 “It was the first time in many, many years that I only had to worry about myself,” she said. “I didn’t have to worry about getting anybody their meds, if anybody was going to tantrum and set anybody off. It was just unbelievable.” 
 
 Now a year and a half later, she’s back to her regular life putting the needs of her sons first. 
 
 On this afternoon, she pushed Ian gently back and forth in a hammock swing that hangs from the doorway. They chatted, but it’s a conversation comprised only of sounds. 
 
 Ian says words that sound like “oy,” “doh” and “day.” Elsner repeats each one. 
 
 “We have conversations that I don’t know what we’re talking about, but we talk anyways, don’t we, Ian?” Elsner said. 
 
 She said even though the trip was short, it’s still having an impact on her ability to cope. 
 
 “After I got home, I realized that there had been a feeling in my chest like a big stone or rock that never went away,” she said. 
 
 She says after the trip, that feeling was gone. It hasn’t been an easy time since she came back — one son had to be hospitalized, and another had to leave school. But Elsner says that rock that used to be in her chest still hasn’t come back.
– Ever since Deborah Skouson came home with a pink flowered shirt for her daughter five years ago, Cami, who has autism, has been "fixated" on it. It quickly became her favorite piece of clothing, leading Skouson to scour eBay each time her daughter's current shirt became unwearable. But the fifth time she sought a replacement, eBay's stock had run dry. That's when the Utah mom turned to Facebook, asking friends to share her request for the shirt along with her offer to pay whatever it cost, plus shipping. "It has to be this exact shirt!" Skouson wrote on Aug. 7. "We've tried similar shirts, and they don't cut it with Cami!" As of Thursday, no less than 150 matching shirts have arrived at her door from as far away as Germany, reports the Daily Dot. "At first, my daughter was a little confused to see more than one of her 'pink flower shirts.' I explained to her that people gave them to her because they loved her," says Skouson, a special education teacher, noting people have offered to make teddy bears, pillows, and blankets for her 10-year-old out of any extra shirts. She adds she tearfully accepted an offer from Target—which sells the Circo-brand item and heard about the story—to make larger versions of the shirt so Cami can wear it even when she's an adult. "It's been very, very touching," Skouson tells KUTV. "These are all total strangers," she wrote on Facebook. "People are inherently good and kind, and I'm glad I've been able to be a recipient of that kindness." (A photo of a cake decorated by someone with autism also went viral.)