Make-A-Wish grants travel wish for 12-year-old girl

DUBLIN, Calif. (KGO) -- A 12-year-old girl with life-threatening illnesses is getting her wish. With the help of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Kayla Andrade of Dublin leaves on Tuesday for Orlando where for one week she can just focus on being a kid. ABC7 News was there for the big reveal.

Kayla knew right away that she got her wish when her childhood friend from Los Angeles opened the door. She asked the Make-A-Wish foundation if she could go to Orlando with her best buddy in tow.

"I am just very excited to go and I'm happy that I'm stable enough to go," Kayla said.

She has been diagnosed with systemic mastocytosis and other rare immune and tissue diseases.

She and her mom drive almost every week from their Dublin home to Southern California for treatment, but on Tuesday, Kayla gets to leave it all behind. She's heading to Disney World and Sea World.

"This shows her and gives her hope that you can keep going, you can keep persevering, you can keep moving forward without feeling like there's no hope," Kayla's mom, DeeDee Riley, said.

After her wish, Kayla will have something else to look forward to -- a new center opening in the fall in Southern California. The Translational Pulmonary and Immunology Research Center, or TPIRC, is where specialists and other patients with rare diseases will be under one roof.

"So when you're in a place where there are people who are worse than you, you kind of realize that there are other people struggling and there are other people like you," Kayla said.

But for now, the focus is on fun and two best friends going on the trip of a lifetime.