How a little boy with cancer became a hero

At first, Mary Lamantia couldn't quite place the teen who reached out to her just before the holidays, but when he declared on a Facebook page that her son Ryan was his hero, she was determined to remember.

Walter Wetzel had met Ryan nearly eight years ago in a hospital waiting room. Both were very sick — Ryan with brain cancer, Walter with leukemia. Walter, then 9, began making silly faces at the little boy sitting across from him.

Soon after, Ryan, who was 3 at the time, made his way into Walter's chemo room and chatted about going home to change into his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume and ride his Big Wheel to his cousin Catlyn's house.

It was the start of a friendship that would blossom during other hospital encounters over the next few months, but they would lose touch after Ryan transferred hospitals. Lamantia's memory of Walter faded during the years that followed, a time of needles, MRIs, chemo and radiation.