Family, friends and supports filled up the first two rows of the normally sparsely populated Fountain Valley City Council Chambers on Nov. 16 to watch a 12-year-old boy be honored for using his bar mitzvah project to rally the community around his cousin.
Wearing black, rectangle-framed glasses, shaggy hair and a red T-shirt matching many in the audience, 12-year-old Jeremy Tucker stood at the dais to be recognized.
"This young man has done something most adults can't do," Mayor Larry Crandall said.
Jeremy used his bar mitzvah project to better someone's life.
The project is traditionally a chance to serve the community or help someone in need. Jeremy made his personal.
The Harry C. Fulton Middle School seventh-grader was set to hold a bowl-a-thon for Tourette syndrome, which he battles daily, when he got the news about his cousin, Jeremy said in an interview at his Fountain Valley home.
Tiffany Cowan, 31, of Tustin was in a car accident on Father's Day that left her paralyzed from the neck down. A South Coast College student studying to become a court reporter, she didn't have medical insurance.