Crowdsourcing a Wish for Marie Fowler

COLLINGSWOOD, NJ - It's the kind of story that restores your faith in the power of the Internet to do good.

Nineteen-year-old Oaklyn native Marie Fowler—the 2011 Collingswood High School alumna whose graduation ceremony was delayed a year as she battled acute lymphoblastic leukemia—is in very serious condition.

Although Fowler underwent a double-donor stem cell transplant in the early part of 2013, her disease has returned, Marie's twin sister Michelle posted on Facebook Wednesday.

Today was by far the hardest day of our lives finding out maries cancer came back and their was nothing they could do to keep her here with us, she fought so so hard. It just seems so unfair. People dont know how lucky they have it. This pain is indescribable..marie will forever live on in my heart she will be the angel watching over me. Maries the strongest person i will ever know. Thank you to every one who has supported her through this journey.. Cancer never wins.

Then, Wednesday evening, Michelle Fowler posted another update: that Marie Fowler had been moved to hospice care.

Not long after, the Web campaign began to connect Marie with Kellin Quinn, a singer whose band Sleeping with Sirens provided encouragement through some of her most challenging moments, according to Michelle Fowler's online accounts.

All of 16 hours old on Thursday, the Facebook page "Kellin Meet Marie" had nearly 2,800 "likes."

"It's Marie's dream to meet him," the page notes in its description. "Together we can make her dream come true."

Around 8 p.m. Thursday night, that request, attached to a photo of Marie Fowler in a hospital bed, had jumped all the way up to the front page of the pictures section of Reddit.

By 11 p.m., a Redditor who claimed to know the guitarist of the band posted: "He doesn't leave for Europe tour till Sunday so depending on where she is, this could still happen."

Although the logistics couldn't be worked out for an in-person meetup, according to Michelle Fowler's instagram page, Quinn set up a video chat with the twins Thursday night.

From start to finish, the whole connection of fan to artist—with thousands of helping hands bridging the gap—was established in a mere matter of hours.

Quinn thanked his Twitter followers for the digital surge that brought the news to him, mostly through the hashtag campaign #kellinmeetmarie.

The organizers of the "Kellin Meet Marie" page posted the following message crediting Facebook users for making the meetup possible:

Thank you to all 2000 + of you. Without you this would not of happened. It makes me so happy knowing there are so many incredible and loving people in our world who are even willing to help a stranger. 

Even "ptoomey," the apparent final link in the social chain, seemed more surprised than anything about being involved in the process.

"I'm just happy that my years of waiting to be able to do something useful through Reddit have finally resulted in something," he wrote early Friday morning.

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