Sister of student wounded in Michigan State shooting starts GoFundMe for medical bills
The older sister of one of the five MSU shooting victims who are in the hospital is making a public plea for support and financial help through GoFundMe for health care and other expenses that is tugging at the heartstrings of thousands of donors nationwide, giving $5, $10, $15, all the way up to $5,000.
Guadalupe Huapilla-Perez, who the fundraising campaign referred to as just "Lupe," is a junior studying hospitality business. Her migrant family, it said, rushed from South Florida to Michigan to be with her, but is now facing medical, travel and other costs that will "burden us at this incredibly difficult time."
Yet, more than a way for people across America to get involved and support those harmed Monday night, the fundraising plea also represents how colleges, and particularly Michigan State, the nation's first public land-grant research university, has been offering students a chance at a better life than their parents — and raises the question whether the mass shootings will make parents and students think twice about going to school so far from home.
Police said Anthony McRae, 43, killed three students and badly injured five others Monday night at Berkey Hall and the MSU Union before authorities found him off campus and he took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot. Officials did not identify the other people who were injured in the shooting, but said they all remain in critical condition.
Classes have been postponed, and counseling, including more than 100 medical professionals, and other resources are being made available to students. It is unclear how many students will return to school when classes resume or how the tragedy might affect future enrollment.
Selena Huapilla-Perez, who started the effort and is an MSU graduate, confirmed her sister "was one of the victims injured in the recent attack at Michigan State University," and "while we are happy that Lupe remains with us, we are devastated by the violence that has impacted so many."
Huapilla-Perez wrote that her sister is in the Michigan State University College Assistance Migrant Program, "a leader in the community and beyond," adding that "Lupe is incredibly hard-working, focused, and ambitious, choosing a career path that's never been explored in our family."
And she is not just the pride of her family, but also of a community that was sending its best and brightest into the world.
In 2020, when Lupe Huapilla-Perez graduated high school, the town of Immokalee, Florida, threw her — and the other 490 or so graduating high school seniors — a parade.
She was Immokalee High School's class president and hung an MSU flag on a truck.
"We were expecting and looking forward to walking the stage in a couple of days and we are unable to do that," she told the local paper, the Naples Daily News. The pandemic's social distancing requirements had quashed many traditions and celebrations, and the parade was a creative alternative to a graduation ceremony. "Just this happening is so good because you see the community coming together for everybody in my grade."
The parade went up South First Street and down Main Street, and ended at the Immokalee Sports Complex.
Huapilla-Perez said she felt a little bit sad to leave her hometown. She was following in the footsteps of her sister, going across the country to a college in East Lansing, where there would be snow and the 50,000-something students in her new school would be almost twice the population of her hometown.
GoFundMe, a for-profit crowdfunding platform, helps charities and people in need raise funds, even in small amounts. Its campaigns are free to set up and the company charges transaction fees — 30 cents plus 2.9% of the donation — which are automatically deducted from each contribution.
In this case, the campaign, so far, has reached 6,600 donors nationwide who have so far given more than $260,000. It also is one of the various campaigns that GoFundMe has included on its hub of fundraisers to help those affected by the MSU shooting.
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Michigan State has a history of offering opportunities to underrepresented students from other states. It's where Ernest Green — one of the so-called Little Rock Nine, the first group of African American students who, in 1957, ever attended classes at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas — went to college.
And Selena Huapilla-Perez was featured in MSU Today in 2019 as the first Latina in MSU’s history to be chosen to be a convocation speaker. She said the majority of people in Immokalee live "under a poverty line that should not exist today, my parents included."
She would not have ventured far beyond the community college 40 minutes from her home if it weren’t for an MSU recruiter who gave a talk at her high school, she said.
"I didn’t know how far Michigan was or even where Michigan State was located, but I wanted to get out of class so I went to the presentation," she explained. The speaker, a Latino, told them about "how he came from migrant farm working parents, his struggles of getting into higher education, what Michigan State did for him and how he was able to get his bachelor's and then his master's degrees."
She, too, she said, had migrated with her family "to nine different states where we worked in the fields picking tomatoes, jalapeños, cucumbers, bell peppers and corn."
And, she added, going from the life of a migrant worker to MSU — where she studied humanities and double minored in Chicano/Latino Studies and teaching English to speakers of other languages — allowed her to realize her dreams and "the dreams of my parents."
Huapilla-Perez did not estimate how much medical care would cost or detail her sister's injuries, but she did say that her sister "is a long way from returning to us as she was" and "doctors tell us that even in improving conditions, the process for a full recovery will take months of care and subsequent rehabilitation."
On top of that, Selena Huapilla-Perez said, "being away from home, our family will be unable to work while monthly bills will continue to mount."
Huapilla-Perez said that "we joke that Lupe would never ask for help," but, she went on to add: "I know she would be extremely moved by the support of all. I thank you all so much for helping us proceed at a time we couldn't have imagined" and the family is "incredibly moved by the love and support" that they have received.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
To donate
The Huapilla-Perez family has asked for support for Guadalupe Huapilla-Perez, who was injured in the shooting at Michigan State University, to help defray medical and other bills through GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/cc26df8f.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: GoFundMe started for MSU student Guadalupe Huapilla-Perez
