Friends Auction Lamb to Raise Money for Heart Transplant (Exclusive)

Last November, 12-year-old Lexi Anderson started feeling dizzy while playing basketball.

“We were running up and down the field and suddenly I just stopped,” she recalls. “My eyes went black and I couldn’t see anything.”

Lexi was diagnosed in December 2023 restrictive cardiomyopathya heart condition in which the muscle tissue in the lower chambers of the heart becomes stiff, leading to reduced blood flow.

“The only cure is a heart transplant,” explains her mother, 45-year-old graphic designer Tamala Anderson. “She is a strong girl. She has a sincere, kind heart. It’s just broken.”

Lexi, who was placed on the transplant list on May 13, still goes to school, but is not allowed to participate in gym class or running. “She shouldn’t be a child,” her mother says. One activity Lexi still gets to participate in: showing animals from her grandparents’ dairy farm at 4-H livestock competitions near her home in Cumberland, Wisc.

At the Barron County Fair last July, after the judges failed to select Lexi’s lamb as one of the 25 sold at auction, Carla Hargrave introduced her two daughters — 13-year-old Holly and 15-year-old Hattie for one of their lambs to Lexi.

“We both immediately said yes,” says Hattie. The sisters, who live on a 600-acre farm in Spooner, Wisc. living, helping grow crops such as corn and alfalfa, have been showing animals with 4-H since third grade. They chose Holly’s 154-lb. lame because it was heavier, thinking it would make more money.

“(Holly) said, ‘I hope you get a heart transplant, and we want to give you the lamb,’” Lexi recalls. “I was so happy. She really cares about me, I just love her.”

Normally a lamb would cost $700 to $1,000 at a similar auction. But the bidding started when Lexi’s lamb hit the block.

“I was in tears,” says Tamala. “People just kept bidding. They bid and they bid and they bid.”

Lexi’s lamb was purchased, returned and resold four times, raising more than $27,000.

“It was amazing to see a small act of kindness grow into something much bigger than I could have imagined,” Holly tells PEOPLE.

The Hargrave family has also dealt with health problems: 46-year-old Carla is a breast cancer survivor (she has been in remission for three years). Hattie suffered from seizures when she was younger, and their brother is formula-fed due to a congenital condition. Holly herself was born with a cleft lip and palate.

“I’ve had many surgeries and I know how important it is to have your friends and family come by and support you,” she says.

Echoes Carla: “It’s difficult to deal with all those medical issues and you always wonder why. ‘Why is this happening to us?’ But looking back now, it really taught the kids to have compassion for others and how important it is to be there for each other, support each other and pray for each other. This has really spread through the community, how people have been supporting (the Andersons) and praying for them as well. Lexi has a tough road ahead of her, and it has been really important to be able to alleviate some of the financial burden so that they can really focus on Lexi and her health.

Tamala says the entire community has come together to help and donate to her daughter’s transplant fund on a website called “Love for Lexie.”

“It shows how good the world still is,” she says. “I am surrounded by pain. That people just come together to show love for my baby, and they don’t even know her. They just want her to be okay. “We’re extremely grateful for everything people are doing because it’s one less thing we have to worry about now, and our concerns are so extreme.”

For more about Lexi and Holly — and other people across the country who have undertaken great acts of kindness — pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now, or subscribe.