Lying in her bed, Jayla Christina Rodriguez watched fire engines, police cars and motorcycles stage a special parade outside of her house Thursday afternoon.
The cancer she has been fighting on and off since she was a young child left Jayla, 13, too weak to watch from the window. So she enjoyed a livestream of the parade on a phone, captured by her father, Antonio Rodriguez, who was outside.
Rodriguez held up his phone and told Jayla: "This is for you, baby."
Dozens of vehicles from the Milwaukee fire and police departments, Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, a city bus, Bell Ambulance and even some civilians on motorcycles participated in a one-block parade outside Rodriguez's home in the 800 block of South 4th Street.
As the parade passed by, Rodriguez wiped tears from his eyes.
"To see her eyes light up like that," Rodriguez said. "It's overwhelming."
Jayla Rodriguez was first diagnosed with cancer when she was 5. After beating it, cancer came back when she was 10 and she beat it again. But now the cancer has returned in the form of a brain tumor.
For the last five months, Jayla has been at home in hospice care.
"I don't think they even expected her to fight this long, five months already," Janet Zamora, an aunt, said. "It's in God's hands now."
Zamora said the family wasn't sure who would arrive when they asked if a parade could be done, but seeing it brought tears to their eyes.
"We were so emotional with this COVID-19, you don't know if people are scared to come, so it was just so emotional," Zamora said.
For the past several days Rodriguez said Jayla hasn't been talking much, instead using a lot of hand signals.
"Nobody wants to see their baby lying in bed," Rodriguez said.
As she watched the parade on the phone, Jayla could hear the sirens and roars of the engine outside her house.
Family and friends gathered on the lawn with signs and yelled, "We love you, Jayla!"
"That was the most important part, that she could hear it," Zamora said. "That we're still here. Her family is still here, her family is around, we're fighting for her."
Rodriguez conveyed his daughter's thanks to everyone who participated.
"She would really be out here saying 'thank you,' " Rodriguez said. "She'd probably see what she could bake for you guys, make some cookies or something for you. That's just who Jayla is."