Campus Fresh and food truck Captain Cookie and the Milkman will both hold events this week to raise money for the junior who survived a suicide attempt earlier this month.
All proceeds from the fundraiser on Tuesday by Campus Fresh, where Emily Thompson has worked, will go to a GoFundMe campaign to help the Thompson family pay for her medical bills. Captain Cookie, where Thompson has worked for the past few months, will also give all the money from its fundraiser to the fund. The truck will park on H Street near Kogan Plaza on Wednesday between 2:30 and 7 p.m.
The campaign, which Thompson’s brother started about two weeks ago, has already raised more than double the original goal of $10,000.
Captain Cookie owner Kirk Francis said he knew Emily as a frequent customer of the food truck long before she started working for him.
“Emily came on board and is just awesome, one of the most confident and friendly people that I’ve ever met,” he said.
At least 90 people have marked that they will attend the Captain Cookie fundraiser on its Facebook event page. Captain Cookie’s Twitter account posted that the fundraiser is affiliated with the GW chapter of the National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association. Thompson serves as the group’s vice president.
On the GoFundMe webpage, Thompson wrote a message last week to those who had made donations, saying she was “gonna be alright.”
“Long road ahead, but I know I have the love and support of so many people. Thank you to everyone,” she wrote.
Her brother wrote on the page that Thompson will return to her Texas home on Monday. He has already raised more than $25,000 for her medical bills, with online gifts ranging from $5 to $1,000. This week, GW’s department of speech and hearing sciences donated $350.
Thompson broke both her feet, both femurs, her knee cap, right arm and cracked her spine when she fell nine floors from Shenkman Hall. She underwent several surgeries and left GW Hospital’s intensive care unit less than a week after the incident. Her brother has said that her family is facing large expenses for rehabilitation and therapy.
