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Twitter helps raise money for wheelchair fund

This story was brought to my attention by a customer of ours in Cornwall and it's a touching tale of a local Cornish man being helped by two celebrities to enable him to buy a new and rather special wheelchair which will extend his freedom in to the more remote and beautiful parts of Cornwall.

Disabled 24 year old Luke has spina bifida and hydrocephalus and is paralysed from the waist down.
It all began when Luke saw an all terrain wheelchair on Dragons Den and it really caught his eye. Before too long Luke's mum tweeted Stephen Fry and told him how the specially adapted off road wheelchair that he had seen on Dragons Den would help Luke to get out and see more of the Countryside. Likes mum is a keen tweeter and has previously had replies from celebrities but even she could not believe what happened next.

Luke's mum, Mrs Thomas, asked Stephen Fry to re-tweet the message to his 6.5 million followers and before too long donations were received in their hundreds. So much so that Paypal encountered technical problems with the account and they apologised and donated a further £250 towards the wheelchair fund.

Donations came in from literally hundreds of people both in the UK but also overseas. Other celebrities that were interested in supporting the specialist wheelchair fund included Jonathan Ross and the cast of Eastenders ! But it wasn't just actors many local resident from Cornwall were also heavily involved in the fund raising with the original appeal on social networking site Facebook.

The icing on the cake occurred when one television present had seen that the total required had been reached he donated a further £2,000 to help to pay for the excursions that Luke is keen to make. The presenter who wished to remain unnamed sent Mrs Thomas a personal message stating that the money was for her and her son Luke to enjoy the beautiful countryside together.

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