ABC World News Tonight viewers raised more than $15,000 for an 8-year-old boy in Vermont who had been saving pennies for years in the hopes of buying a service dog.
WNT aired the story of Aiden Heath Sunday night, showing him bringing mason jars filled with collected pennies to the bank–he’d been saving for four years, but was still thousands of dollars short of his goal.
Heath has type 1 diabetes, and had seen a story about service dogs that can monitor glucose levels. He decided he wanted one of those dogs for himself.
24 hours after the story aired, ABC News viewers contributed more than enough to push Aiden over the top. He’s going to get a dog–named Angel. “We love our viewers,” said WNT anchor David Muir as he updated the story at the end of the newscast Monday evening.