An Ohio native in hospice care in Virginia had a dying wish fulfilled last month when a restaurant shipped a mocha milkshake from their popular suburban Cleveland restaurant.
50-year-old Emily Pomeranz died on Friday of pancreatic cancer just 4 days after she had the shake she was longing for.
When her friend Sam Klein heard his friend's request during a visit to her hospice he jumped into action.
"I went to visit her in a hospice a few weeks ago and asked her if she needed anything .. She said with a smile, I wish I could have one more Tommy's mocha milkshake," Klein said.
Klein, who now lives in Washington D.C., also grew up in Cleveland. Klein contacted the Tommy's restaurant in Cleveland Heights to arrange the long-distance order.
Continue to the next page to see the response he got.
He sent an email to the general information address and a few days later he got an unexpected phone call.
"A few days later I got a call from Tommy Fello, the owner of Tommy's. 'Yes. We will figure out a way to do this,' is what he said," Klein wrote in his Facebook post.
In the 47-year history of the restaurant he had never had an order like this.
"This was my first request like this," said Fello. "I wasn't even sure if we'd be able to do it."
He dubbed it his "milkshake mission" to pull off this request.
Fello put the beverage on dry ice donated by Pierre's ice cream and paid $123 for overnight shipping to get the drink the 370 miles across the country.
Emily was overjoyed to taste her favorite shake again.
"Seeing her in that picture was just something else, I'll tell ya. What a reward," Fello said. "I was so happy it worked. I wasn't sure how it was going to work, and Sam called me and said it worked. We called it the "˜Milkshake Mission' or something like that, "˜Mission Impossible.'"
I want to share a great story with you about a place we all know and love: Tommy’s Restaurant on Coventry (in Cleveland...
Posted by Sam Klein on Monday, July 31, 2017
"She got a lot of momentum out of not only being able to enjoy something as special as a childhood nostalgic milkshake but the fact so many people were smiling about her," Klein said. "A lot of people have said 'this made me feel good' and I know Emily would love the fact that she's making people feel good even though she's not here with us anymore."
