LIBERTY TOWNSHIP, OH — On Friday, Hansika Hamre will receive the final design of a gift that will make the 4-year-old Liberty Township girl’s life a whole lot easier. Hansika was born with a rare genetic disorder, symbrachydactyly, and the fingers on her right hand never fully developed. It hasn’t held her back much, and she’s just like any other active little girl who climbs ladders, bounces balls and hangs from monkey bars. When she’s playing, mom Cara Hamre says, she’s like any other child with 10 fully developed fingers.
But some simple tasks, like pulling up a zipper or tying her shoes, are difficult. When they found out about Hansika’s condition last fall, four Lakota East High School students studying engineering at a nearby technology school were touched by her independence and resolve, then spent the school year designing a prosthetic hand for Hansika.
On Wednesday, they gave her a preview of their work, news station WCPO reported.
“If you don’t like it, you can let me know,” senior Cali Hoffman told Hansika of the prosthetic hand designed for the little girl. “We’ll fix it for you, OK?”
Hoffman and three other students taking engineering classes through Butler Tech, which provides career education for thousands of Ohio school students, met Hansika last fall and were touched by her desire to do things the way other kids do.
“We got to meet her and it was really sweet, just kind of tugged at your heartstrings a little bit,” Hoffman told WCPO in an interview last fall. “We were like, we have to deliver, you know … you don’t want to disappoint her.”
The students, who also include Logan Spilie, Ben Roth, and Sam Billisits, “wanted to do a project that makes a direct difference in someone’s life,” Hoffman said, according to a story in the Journal-News.
Seeing Hansika on the playground monkey bars with just one hand left an indelible impression on Billisits.
“She was doing monkey bars just by hanging onto her wrist,” he told WCPO.
When Hansika saw her new hand Wednesday, she told the students, “I really want to do the monkey bars by myself.”
Although Hansika has adjusted to symbrachydactyly and “you wouldn’t know that she was missing her fingers,” she wants to “button her buttons and, you know, kind of tie her shoelaces and things like that that we all take for granted,” her mother told WCPO.
Last fall, Butler Tech and Lakota East High School engineering teacher Ken Kinch took the students on a field trip to Cincinnati’s Kinetic Vision, where the engineers used 3D technology to capture geometric data of Hansika’s hand.
“It’s exciting for us to engage with students and make them aware of the latest (research and development) tools,” Jim Topich, the company’s vice president of engineering, told the Journal-News. “At the end of the day, the real reward in harnessing all this technology is when we all see Hansika using a functional new hand.”
Kinch wants to send his students off to engineering school armed with real-life skills, and the students’ capstone project to build Hansika a new hand meets that goal.
“They’re using the skills they’ve learned on a real-world challenge, and I think it also drives home the importance of community service,” he told WCPO.
Hansika’s parents are overwhelmed by the students’ gift to their daughter.
“To have them kind of reach out and kind of do something so neat and special for her, I mean it’s pretty cool to see kids these days show that kind of care and love,” the girl’s father, Erik Hamre, told WCPO.